NHSE director acting as commercial chief a year after first advert

NHS England/Improvement confirmed to HSJ this week that NHSE national director for transformation and corporate operations, Emily Lawson, was performing the role, which is part of the joint NHSE/I structure, while recruitment for a permanent CCO continues.

The regulator has not confirmed when Ms Lawson took on these responsibilities.

NHSE/I has been trying to fill the role for more than a year: A 2018 job advert gave an indicative closing date for applications of 26 November that year.

According to that advert, the CCO was due to “provide the commercial leadership for the NHS in line with the government commercial function, drive the improvement of NHS procurement, provide expert commercial advice across the system and drive the improvement in commercial capability across the NHS,” among other tasks.

However, NHSE/I has made some major changes to its proposed new structure since then, and in April HSJ was told the CCO role was being revised to include some or all responsibility for specialised commissioning, commercial aspects of medicines, and innovation and life sciences.

The portfolio of the current interim CCO role, and proposed substantive CCO role, remains unclear, and large parts of the above functions are currently carried out by other NHSE/I directors. NHSE/I has not published an updated senior organisational structure since its latest round of changes.

The restructure bringing the two organisations together has now been ongoing for about 20 months.

HSJ included Ms Lawson, who has a background in molecular genetics, on last year’s list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare. She previously worked for private sector companies including Kingfisher plc, Morrisons and McKinsey.

Ms Lawson recently took on a role as director to the board of Supply Chain Coordination Limited, the company that runs NHS Supply Chain.

Currently owned by the Department for Health and Social Care, news emerged in January that NHSE/I was considering taking over SCCL. The regulator was expected to decide in March whether the transfer would take place. But it told HSJ in October it was still performing “due diligence” on the transfer.

The company has come under fire in recent months for failing to provide timely and accurate reports for individual trusts. A spokeswoman previously told HSJ the company was working with IT provider DXC Technology to solve the “critical” systems issue.