Karen - NHS Assistant Director & Project Leader

Karen

NHS Assistant Director & Project Leader

Sectors: Healthcare

Find out more about this practitioner

Contact

Jessica Tabern

Senior Consultant

jessica.tabern@practicus.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1491 577122

Karen is a focused, successful and highly respected Assistant Director & Project Leader. She has a solid track record with large NHS programmes and is recognised as a modernisation leader who can deliver projects through their full lifecycle.

Northampton General Hospital Trust

Karen played a key role in the hospital modernisation and re-structuring PFI initiative. This was an ambitious £290m programme that aimed to rebuild 80% of the hospital into a single building. The key driver was improving services with evidence-based pathways. Karen would oversee the capital build business cases and also the blue printing of the vast majority of the hospital’s services.

Business cases for Capital investment

Whole Hospital service and site re-configuration (Shaping the Future) Strategic Outline Case £290m
Emergency Care Centre, Outline Business Case, £3m
Day Surgery Centre, Outline Business Case, £12m
Integrated Cardiology, Renal & Nuclear Medicine Department, Outline and Full Business Cases, £15m
Four Counties Pathology Information System, Outline and Full Business Case, £4m

Strategy & Business Development

Development of a Trust-wide performance and planning framework that integrated the Trust’s key performance indicators with key clinical quality measurements (quantitative and qualitative)
Development of a “service blueprint” setting out a service vision and model of care for the Trust in the context of the local health economy along with detailed descriptions of the services and inter-relationships between them.

Karen was also hands on with the delivery of projects, combining 3 separate treatment facilities into one building (rather than the 3 separate buildings originally planned). This brought down the combined costs for these facilities from £20m to £14m, saving the Trust in excess of £6m in building costs.

Bedfordshire & Luton Mental Health and Social Care Partnership Trust

Karen was instrumental in re-designing models and the business case behind the re-provision of 60 acute beds in a new build development. The Trust had been working on the business case for a number of years but had made little progress. Key to the issue was the lack of a framework and process for building business cases. Karen was able to provide the structure and coaching to develop the function within the organisation. At the same time she led several of the business cases herself, including a centre for community teams as well as the new build development for acute beds.

Set up and handover of a private cancer facility

Karen joined this hospital at a time of extreme financial challenge. One of the hospital Consultants had been approached by a private provider about a ward that had been emptied by the hospital as part of efficiency plans. The Board saw an opportunity to generate revenue from the lease of the ward to a private provider and Karen was tasked with making it happen.

The project involved four separate entities: the Trust itself, a PFI partner, the Private Provider and the construction company. With varied agendas, mobilising and delivering the project end-to-end was complicated in the extreme. For example, the PFI provider - who stood to gain nothing from the deal - was very reluctant to move fast and agree contractual terms.

Karen took a very skinny brief, built a business case and presented it to the Trust Board, agreed Service Level Agreements with 12 different teams from Radiotherapy to IT and helped lead the final delivery. She was very ‘hands on’, personally overseeing the set up and handover. The agreement is expected to yield as much as £1m income a year for the next decade.

Karen’s sponsor said, "This project would not have been delivered in the timescales or as easily without her involvement. Her colleagues within the Trust and especially within our private partner have all complimented her on this complex delivery programme."

Fast Facts

MSP and PRINCE2 trained, Karen is an AD-level NHS manager
Delivered cases for whole Hospital Service and site re-configuration valued at £290m
Managed the development of a Trust-wide performance and planning framework
Saved £6m in building costs for a Hospital Trust through co-locating facilities
Completed East of England SHA’s Aspiring Director programme
Led capital investment and site development strategies
Redesigned and managed clinical strategy and service blueprints
Delivered new models of care and redesigned pathways
Supported the development of a health community-wide strategy for unscheduled care
Led strategy for the provision of secure services at a Mental Health Trust