Daily Insight: Singing ‘kumbaya’ as the Titanic sinks

There was no shortage of things to talk about when HSJ sat down with some of the health service’s most respected trust chief executives recently. 

Milton Keynes University Hospital Foundation Trust chief executive Joe Harrison shared his worries for the NHS’s future, remarking: “I think we’re in danger of all sitting around the campfire singing ‘kumbaya’ as the Titanic sinks. We are presiding over a failing NHS.” 

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust CEO Matthew Trainer added: “One of the things I talk a lot about with my team is that it’s entirely possible that we’re underfunded and that we’re wasting money as well… There is no doubt that the NHS played an amazing role in the pandemic, but patience for protecting the NHS from the broader economic context we’re in ended some time ago.”

Turning to integrated care systems, Northumbria Healthcare FT chief executive and NHS England’s elective recovery director Sir Jim Mackey said the recently established organisations should not tell chief executives “how to run hospitals”. 

Croydon Health Services Trust CEO Matthew Kershaw called for “benign ICSs”, adding: “I don’t think it [the ICS] should be doing my job every day.”

The chief executives – who were participating in a roundtable to mark the publication of HSJ’s annual ranking of the NHS’s “top 50 trust chief executives” – also had their say on NHSE. Caroline Clarke, chief executive of north London’s Royal Free group of trusts, said she was keen – “hung up” on, in her own words – for an effective operating model from the centre because not having one increased the chance NHSE staff would “get in the way and stop us making decisions”.

She, however, added it was “great” NHSE CEO Amanda Pritchard and her team were “amplifying” the importance of good relationships between national and local leaders. 

Future tech talent

When Caroline Shaw took on the interim CEO role at Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn Foundation Trust in 2019, it was quite a different organisation than it is today. 

Ms Shaw – who was deputy chief executive and chief operating officer at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust before joining and also a past CEO of The Christie FT – led the troubled trust from an overall Care Quality Commission rating of “inadequate” to “requires improvement” this February. The CQC also recommend the trust be removed from NHSE’s “recovery support programme,” formerly known as special measures.

Now, Ms Shaw has announced she is leaving to join Manchester-based health tech firm Evergreen Life as chief operating officer. 

She said: “After almost four decades of service to the NHS, I now feel ready to look to my next and likely final stage of my career and I know now is the right time to end my chapter at QEH and move on to make a positive difference to people and healthcare in a different way.”