Does the CEO's departure mean Wes Streeting is finally getting a grip on the NHS?
But under her management the NHS has stumbled from crisis to crisis, with productivity falling even as more money was pumped in. Her resignation was announced after a meeting with the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, whose frustrations over the system's resistance to change is evident as he prepares a package of reforms to be announced in the spring.
The overhaul suggests that Mr Streeting wants to tighten Whitehall control over the health service. The new 'transition' CEO, Sir James Mackey, is to be given 'a remit to radically reshape' the relationship between the NHS and the government.
Yet Sir James is a career health executive currently running Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It is debatable whether another appointment from within is the answer to the service's travails, rather than an outsider with experience of running a large organisation.
Sir James is said to 'know the NHS inside out' but his predecessors were aware of its flaws and yet it proved largely impervious to change or to sharing good practice. Can the new CEO make a difference while the NHS remains a nationalised behemoth rather than a social insurance-based system of the sort seen elsewhere in Europe?
The political establishment insists upon upholding the 'founding principles' of the NHS set out in 1948 without asking if these are the barrier to the very reforms that are desperately needed.
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The Independent
2 hours ago
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Struggling to sleep? Your gut bacteria could be to blame
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