NHS chief executive resigns amid financial crisis
pharmafile | March 10, 2006 | News story | |Â Â Â
NHS chief executive Nigel Crisp is to step down from the post as debts deepen in the health service.
Significant improvements have been made to the health service since Crisp's appointment in 2000, but mounting financial problems in some NHS trusts have undermined confidence in the chief executive.
Health secretary Patricia Hewitt told MPs in December that the NHS was heading for a net deficit of 623 million, but that figure is expected to rise significantly. Hewitt has since refused to comment on how large the deficit is likely to be by the end of the financial year, but some estimates put it at 800 million.
King's Fund chief executive Niall Dickson said: "There are severe financial difficulties in the health service which threaten to derail the reforms.
"But if Nigel Crisp is responsible, so too are the politicians who oversaw the expensive new pay deals and the other changes that have helped to create the current pressures."
Commenting on his tenure in the high-pressure job, Nigel Crisp said: "Looking back over the last five years, I am proud that the NHS has achieved or exceeded the challenging targets it has been set. Over this period, people have made enormous changes in the NHS.
"But not everything has gone well. I am particularly saddened by the difficulties we have had over the last few months and the financial problems we are grappling with."
He will be replaced by acting NHS chief executive Sir Ian Carruthers, a former SHA head who was recently appointed to the Department of Health's board as acting director of commissioning.
Crisp was the first civil servant to combine the previously separate roles of head of a government department and head of the NHS a combination critics say was fundamentally incompatible.
Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Steve Webb said: "It is quite right that these roles will now be split. The NHS sometimes has to tell the Government that its policy is damaging the health service, and Nigel Crisp was put in an impossible position in this respect. His departure makes way for this conflict to be resolved."
Following Crisp's retirement and Sir Ian Carrutherss appointment as acting chief executive of the NHS, Hugh Taylor takes over Crisp's other role as acting permanent secretary of the Department of Health.
The NHS Confederation's chief executive Dr Gill Morgan said: "Very few people could have managed the combined roles of permanent secretary and chief executive which must be the most challenging jobs in the country in either public or private sector.
"Sir Ian Carruthers is well known in the service and his wealth of experience in the NHS makes him ideal in the interim role as NHS chief executive. With Hugh Taylor acting as permanent secretary, Sir Ian will be allowed to focus on the actions needed over the next few months to ensure that the NHS deals with current pressures."
Taylor, a career civil servant, is currently group director of strategy and business development at the Department.
The new appointees will take up their posts ahead of a reconfiguration of the NHS that will see mergers of PCTs and SHAs significantly reduce their numbers and new leaders appointed.
