New chief executive for beleaguered acute trust

Lesley Dwyer will lead the trust, which has been heavily criticised by the Care Quality Commission for its poor accident and emergency performance.

Ms Dwyer’s start date is yet to be confirmed but is expected to be towards the end of May.

Ms Dwyer was previously chief executive of West Moreton Hospital and Health Service in Queensland, Australia.

Chair of Medway, Shena Winning, who led the appointment process, said: “We are delighted to have secured a chief executive of Lesley’s calibre. This appointment is crucial to the delivery of our plan that Medway will become a stable, sustainable and significant provider of care in Kent over the next five years, delivering the high quality of care the people of Medway deserve.

“There are significant parallels between the hospital Lesley is currently at and Medway, they are similar sized organisations with very similar challenges. She took over West Moreton as a failing hospital and quickly turned it around financially and operationally and it is now a sustainable thriving service.

“We have undertaken a global search to secure the right person with a proven track record of turnaround success to lead our transformation and we look forward to welcoming Lesley to Medway.”

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The trust has had a large number of senior leadership changes over the past two years. Monitor replaced the trust’s chair and chief executive at the beginning of last year and said it was “disappointed” with how the trust had been led.

Phillip Barnes, who has been acting chief executive since last summer, will return to his role as medical director.

The trust has been heavily criticised by the CQC for its poorly performing A&E department.

It has taken a number of steps to make improvements including employing an emergency consultant lead from Homerton University Hospital FT, where the A&E department was rated “outstanding”, and employing two emergency consultants.

The trust now has to assess every patient that arrives at the A&E within 15 minutes and report back to the CQC on a weekly basis.