How one chief executive transformed his new FT and the rest of today’s news and comment

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15.01pm: A major reconfiguration has been anounced at North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust this afternoon.

This will see all high-risk surgery moved from the trust’s facility in Whitehaven to its other main site in Carlisle.

The trust says in the wake of the Keogh mortality indicator review the move will save lives.

14.41pm: The chief executive of Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn Foundation Trust is leaving to take up the chief executive role at the Royal College of Physicians.

Patricia Wright has worked at board level in the NHS for 12 years and said in a statement: “I look forward to managing the Royal College of Physicians at a very exciting time in its history.”

She has been in post since November 2011 and the trust has been criticised by Monitor for failing to meet the A&E target for three successive quarters. It also failed to provide an adequate financial recovery plan to the regulator and was critiised by the CQC.

11.46am: A trust in Essex has been ordered to pay £350,000 in fines and costs after two people died in an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.

Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals Foundation Trust were fined in court yesterday after the outbreak in 2006 and 2007 which saw eight people infected.

11.16am: Research from the HSJ’s James Illman has unearthed the cost of the three contentious pathology reconfigurations.

While the central costs were put at £2m, experts say it will have costs trusts and bidders £10m.

11am: An American firm providing NHS services donated to the Conservatives before the last general election, the Press Association reports.

10.31am: Outgoing chair of the Royal College of GPs Clare Gerada has a new job transforming primary care, the HSJ’s Dave West exclusively reports.

10.12am: In the void created by NHS England’s internal problems, health secretary Jeremy Hunt has been keen to be seen leading from the front. Mr Hunt is chairing weekly meetings with the heads of all major NHS agencies in which he is very directly demanding to know “what is being done” about problems reaching as far down into the service as the fate of individual trusts. Listen to the audio podcast by HSJ editor Alastair McLellan.  

10.08am: The North West Ambulance Service Trust has won the contract to provide 111 services in east Cheshire. See Sarah Calkin’s earlier stories for a fuller picture of NHS 111 and NHS Direct.

10.01am: The HSJ’s David Williams has updated his exclusive story on the future of commissioning support units. There is also now a handy timeline setting out the changing direction of policy.

8:46am: Good morning, today on HSJ’s leadership channel, Attila Vegh, chief executive of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust, describes the challenges involved in taking charge of a failing organisation and bringing about change.

He writes: ”As the new leader of a failing organisation, you will have to make some tough decisions − decisions that will make you unpopular. It won’t be an easy start, but nothing works as powerfully as building a strong sense of urgency around the need for change. Cosmetic and environmental changes are quick and easy to accomplish but no one likes huge change, so emotional buy-in is just as important as rational buy-in.”

She adds that “creating that emotional investment meant focusing on the patient. It was not − and never is − about the regulators.” Read the entire article here.