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Turnaround CEO quits trust to join health tech firm

Published on: 25 Jul 2022
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A chief executive who led one of the country’s most challenged trusts out of special measures is leaving to join a health technology company.

Caroline Shaw, who is set to become chief operating officer at Evergreen Life, was appointed Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn Foundation Trust’s interim chief executive in January 2019 before it became permanent that September.

Evergreen Life, based in Manchester, has a mobile app where patients can book GP appointments, order repeat prescriptions and access their medical information.

The Care Quality Commission recommended QEH be removed from NHS England’s “recovery support programme,” formerly known as special measures, after upgrading its overall rating from “inadequate” to “requires improvement” in February this year.

Inspectors raised its rating in two domains, effective and well-led, up two categories from “inadequate” to “good” while also lifting its rating in the caring domain from “requires improvement” to “good”.

Ms Shaw joined QEH after serving as deputy chief executive and chief operating officer at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust for four years.

Prior to that, she was chief executive of The Christie FT for nearly a decade, from between June 2005 and October 2014.

She will leave QEH in September, after which the trust’s chief nurse Alice Webster will serve as its acting chief executive.

She said: “After almost four decades of service to the NHS, I now feel ready to look to my next and likely final stage of my career and I know now is the right time to end my chapter at QEH and move on to make a positive difference to people and healthcare in a different way.”

Last year, a Department of Health and Social Care briefing note revealed the NHSE media team had become concerned with the “sensationalist tone” Ms Shaw had taken over the poor state of her hospital building’s roof.