East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust today announced that its new Chief Executive will be Tracey Fletcher, who has led Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in London since 2013.
The Homerton Hospital was rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission last year.
Tracey lives near Deal and is passionate about local services. She worked at EKHUFT as Chief Operating Officer between 2008 and 2010.
She said: “I am delighted to be joining East Kent Hospitals as its CEO. It is a real privilege to be appointed to my local Trust and as a local resident I am very aware of the Trust’s vital role in its community, as a provider of care and as an employer.
“I am looking forward to working with staff across the organisation as well as with governors, volunteers and partners, to deliver great healthcare for patients and a great place to work for staff.”
The Trust’s Chairman Niall Dickson, said: “We are fortunate to have attracted such an experienced NHS leader with a great track record and a total commitment to continue our drive to improve the care we provide to the people of East Kent.”
Tracey will take up her role in the Spring when current CEO Susan Acott steps down.
Susan has been the Trust’s substantive CEO since April 2018. During her term as CEO the Trust has been in the spotlight over a number of avoidable baby deaths, including that of seven day old Harry Richford, and has had to deal with the challenges of the pandemic.
Niall said: “The Trust’s Board is immensely grateful to Susan for her dedication to the NHS and to the Trust. She has led the organisation through the pandemic, the most challenging period in the history of the NHS, has overseen many key changes and secured much needed investment for some of our key services.
“We are aware that there is more we need to do to provide consistently high standards of care for all our patients, but we believe that this organisation has huge potential. Under Tracey’s leadership we will do everything we can to support our staff to provide the best possible care and to work closely with all our partners in East Kent.
“Tracey’s appointment enables a smooth transition as the Trust moves to the next stage of its improvement journey.”
MUST be better than the last one ??
That is what they said about the last one.
Give her a chance.
Her pay and benefit package will be £?
a new captain on the titanic ?
Does she realise ASHFORD is NOT in east kent and reverse decision to move stroke unit in Margate to mid Kent ashford
Oh god she looks like Dido Harding! She is passionate about ‘local services’, what a thing to passionate about. The sort of people who are passionate about these sort of things, have a traffic cone collection at home.
Someone send her a map and mark on it where Ashford is, so that she knows that a remote hospital stuck up a congested side road, 40 miles away from other parts of the trust is not local.
Well said
And impossible to get to on public transport!
Good luck to her she can only try her best. Having worked in the NHS for 39 years the governments of both parties are to blame for the difficulties the NHS has suffered and still does to this day. East Kent hospital services have been underfunded for years compared to other areas. We have had 23 closers and or downgrading of one kind or other over the past 30 years and they are only the ones I can remember. The managers have had to manage wearing straight jackets supplied from the government. We have only had one good health secretary in all those years frank Dobson and Blair sacked him.
She will just carry on what went on before. Her passion will not be strong enough to get previous unsafe decisions with services overturned. She will have to push very hard if she is going to get anywhere with that and get the missing services back up and running at the QEQM hospital.
We do not even have a E.N.T. outpatients anymore (despite it still showing at Margate on the EKHT website) so I discovered after waiting 7 months and counting for an appointment to be directed over to Ashford once again, or to wait even longer for one at Canterbury. Because of covid we are still suffering in silence.
Tracey Fletcher, a lamb to the slaughter… the NHS is on ITU, morphine drip just about to be removed (if you haven’t had the sense to work this out already)
Homerton Hospital, where Tracey Fletcher has been CEO since 2013 and COO for three years before that, had its own maternity scandal, in which a group of whistleblowing midwives spoke out about avoidable deaths of babies and mothers. https://www.nursingtimes.net/roles/midwives-and-neonatal-nurses/exclusive-homerton-safety-review-after-claims-from-unhappy-midwives-09-04-2014/
Another controversy during Fletcher’s time at Homerton was the continuation of the contract with ISS, a private company that managed the cleaning, portering and security at Homerton and other hospitals. Pay was so low that staff came in to work even whilst sick with covid – the story made the national papers. A large campaign, running for many months, called on Fletcher to bring the services in-house, raise pay to the London living wage and get rid of ISS; as far as I can make out, they didn’t get rid of ISS but there may have been some sort of a pay deal for self-isolating staff.
Privatised pathology has been another issue, with concerns raised by locals about the safety of the public-private HSL labs being used for blood and urine testing by Homerton.
These happened on Tracey Fletcher’s watch, which doesn’t look particularly good.
https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/health/plans-to-centralise-homerton-hospital-pathology-test-laboratory-approved-3666382
https://www.healthwatchhackney.co.uk/news/nhs-privatisation-concerns-after-london-public-private-path-lab-errors-revealed/
Well being a local lady I hope she will help get our stroke unit back. The drive to William Harvey is a hike when your well. I would hate to have to go there if I was having a stroke
Topcat, like I said its impossible to get to the William Harvey by public transport, or come to that the Kent & Canterbury hospital! This doesn’t just impact on patients, but also on visitors, not everyone drives a car! I was recently referred to the William Harvey, and refused to go, so a specialist was found in Thanet which I could get to by bus! Moving medical care/specialists to hospitals no one can get to by public transport, should be stopped, but I doubt it will, as this Tory government is bent on selling off the NHS bit by bit!