Search for new health chief goes overseas as UK candidates fail to shine
The search for a new chief executive for the financially beleaguered National Health Service is to go overseas as the Department of Health struggles to attract high quality applicants to top posts. In an indication that they do not expect the search to be a short one, ministers have said Sir Ian Carruthers, the acting NHS chief executive, will have his secondment extended from July until the end of the year.
Last week senior NHS managers were appointed as chief executives in eightout of 10 strategic health authorities. But two positions, which carry basic salaries of £150,000 to £170,000, are to be readvertised after it was decided that none of the applicants was good enough.
That happened in spite of widespread advertising, which succeeded in attracting some applications from the private sector and from elsewhere outside the NHS.
Exploratory talks have been held with figures in the US whom it is thought would bring some of the commissioning skills that the service needs as it begins to act more as a giant insurance and health purchasing system and less as the direct provider of all services.
An outsider, however, would be taking on a service with an overspend in the past financial year that is expected to reach several hundred million pounds. Ministers acknowledge big restructuring of some hospital services will be needed. But the prospect is that the increases under way in NHS spending will slow markedly after 2008.
The health department said it had not been decided whether to keep the NHS chief executive job separate from that of the department's permanent secretary, or to remerge the jobs in to the single post that Sir Nigel Crisp held. Lord Warner, the minister for health reform, said in a recent interview that there was a good case for keeping the two separate.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/408203c4-de2e-11da-af29-0000779e2340.html
Last week senior NHS managers were appointed as chief executives in eightout of 10 strategic health authorities. But two positions, which carry basic salaries of £150,000 to £170,000, are to be readvertised after it was decided that none of the applicants was good enough.
That happened in spite of widespread advertising, which succeeded in attracting some applications from the private sector and from elsewhere outside the NHS.
Exploratory talks have been held with figures in the US whom it is thought would bring some of the commissioning skills that the service needs as it begins to act more as a giant insurance and health purchasing system and less as the direct provider of all services.
An outsider, however, would be taking on a service with an overspend in the past financial year that is expected to reach several hundred million pounds. Ministers acknowledge big restructuring of some hospital services will be needed. But the prospect is that the increases under way in NHS spending will slow markedly after 2008.
The health department said it had not been decided whether to keep the NHS chief executive job separate from that of the department's permanent secretary, or to remerge the jobs in to the single post that Sir Nigel Crisp held. Lord Warner, the minister for health reform, said in a recent interview that there was a good case for keeping the two separate.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/408203c4-de2e-11da-af29-0000779e2340.html
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