NHS England names new regional director

NHS England has appointed a long-serving trust chief executive as its new regional director for the North West, it confirmed today.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Foundation Trust CEO Louise Shepherd will succeed Richard Barker, who retired at the end of June earlier this year.

Mr Barker, who retired after four decades in the health service, was the regional director for both the North West and North East and Yorkshire regions.

Ms Shepherd will be RD only for the North West, a patch with many of the service’s deepest financial problems. No appointment has been made for NEY so far, and it is unclear what stage the recruitment process is at.

In a staff memo today, seen by HSJ, NHSE chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: “I am looking forward to welcoming Louise to NHS England and to our executive team when she joins us later in the autumn.”

Ms Shepherd has been CEO at Alder Hey since March 2008, leading development of a children’s health campus, and is well regarded by many leaders in the patch. 

She chairs NHSE’s national children and young people’s board, and was also the senior responsible officer for Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System’s children’s transformation programme.

A financial and management consultant by background, Ms Shepherd started her NHS career as director of business development at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital in 1993, before later becoming chief executive of Liverpool Women’s Hospital in 2003.

The appointment comes as all three of the region’s ICSs grapple with major financial problems. HSJ revealed Cheshire and Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and Lancashire and South Cumbria, were among the initial nine systems that NHSE told to bring in consultants to steer their finances back to plan.

Greater Manchester is one of the largest systems in the country and has signed up to enforcement undertakings imposed by NHSE amid a “significant and ongoing underlying deficit of concern”.

North West medical director and chief clinical information officer Michael Gregory has served as interim regional director since Mr Barker left in June, and will now return to his substanative role.