NHS chief runners & riders – Berwick out, who is still in?
Elliot Bidgood, 25 June 2013
It’s now been a month since NHS England Chief Executive David Nicholson announced his intention to step down in 2014, during which time much discussion has taken place about who may replace him. Many of those suggested are already serving on the NHS England board or are experienced within the NHS. However, NHS England Chair Malcolm Grant has made comparisons to last year’s decision to appoint outgoing Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to lead the Bank of England, raising the possibility that the search might ‘go global’. In a post with Civitas last week, health expert and One small step for the NHS, but one giant leap for its principles? author Dr Tony Hockley argued the merits of this possibility.
One speculated international candidate, former US Medicare and Medicaid administrator and current NHS ‘zero-harm’ safety czar Don Berwick, now appears out of contention – Berwick announced last week in the American press that he is running for governor in his home state of Massachusetts in 2014, presumably ruling him out for the NHS’s top job.
Other relative ‘outsider’ names include Mark Britnell, KPMG Health director since 2009 and an advocate of reform (though as a 24-year veteran of NHS management, he would also bring crucial institutional experience to the role), and UnitedHealth VP and a former Blair health advisor Simon Stevens, though in an interview Britnell seemed to hint at a possible reluctance to leave KPMG just yet. Another is Ian Dalton, head of health with BT (and also a former NHS Commissioning Board member). NHS Confederation head Mike Farrar is another possibility (though over the weekend his position has been called into question over the Morecombe Bay scandal), as are commissioning director Dame Barbara Hakin, Birmingham Foundation Trust executive Dame Julie Moore, public health head Duncan Selbie and NHS Trust Development lead David Flory. Another worthwhile approach might be to hand the leadership of the NHS to a doctor who has worked on the frontlines rather than another managerial type – enter reformist surgeon Lord Darzi or the NHS’s impressive medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. Professor Aidan Halligan, a former deputy medical officer and claimed predictor of many current NHS problems, have also been mooted.
Here’s a blue-skies international appointment suggestion; it is arguable that the NHS could stand to learn from some of the health systems on the continent – how about Médecins Sans Frontières co-founder and former French Socialist health minister Bernard Kouchner? Kouchner once suggested in a New Statesman interview that the UK should restructure our system in order to increase funding, reinforce patient choice and bring it into line with the renowned health system he oversaw, which was recommended as a ‘Plan B’ reform model even by two staunch academic critics of the current coalition market reforms. Just an idea.
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