Pharma exec named chair of high-performing trust

A new chair has been appointed at one of England’s best performing trusts.

Chemist Annette Doherty will take over from David Highton at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust. Mr Highton leaves at the end of April after seven years as chair.

Ms Doherty is president-elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry and spent 35 years working in the pharmaceutical sector, including most recently at GSK where she was senior vice president and global head of product development and clinical supply. 

She is a senior adviser at Frazier Life Sciences, which invests in companies developing novel therapeutics, and has served as a non-executive director of Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust since 2017.

MTW is in the top tier of NHS England’s oversight framework, is regularly one of the top performing trusts on the four-hour accident and emergency target, and finished the last financial year in surplus. It recently acquired a local private hospital.

Ms Doherty said: “I’m looking forward to working with colleagues and partners across the Kent and Medway Integrated Care System and the Kent and Medway Medical School as we deliver a number of ambitious projects which will provide real improvements in patient care.

“These include the official openings of both the new hyper acute stroke unit and the Kent and Medway Orthopaedic Centre, the development of services at the recently acquired Spire Tunbridge Wells Hospital site and the completion of a new academic teaching building.”

Miles Scott, chief executive at MTW, said she would “provide a fresh insight and focus for MTW as we continue to develop services and improve care for our local communities”.

He thanked Mr Highton – who is also the chair of Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust – for the role he had played at the Trust, including the support and leadership he had provided to both him and the board. He will remain Bucks chair.