Who We Are
The three Directors bring together complimentary and different perspectives of the delivery of health care. The following sections give more details of each Director.
Dr Carson was a GP for 10 years before spending 6 years in an inner London Health Authority leading primary care policy and performance. Whilst there he led a service and strategy review of primary and acute services resulting in the delivery of £13M of savings, much of it through de-commissioning services and commissioning a rather different range of services. He also developed and implemented performance management systems for general practice in East London and led an educational project within which joint training and development structures for doctors and nurses were developed compliant with multi-professional regulatory frameworks.
David spent 4 years developing GP Out of Hours services and emergency care policy and performance for the Department of Health. During this time he published – 'Raising Standards for Patients: New Partnerships in Out-of-Hours Care' (known as the ‘Carson Report). David was also the primary care lead on the development of ‘Reforming Emergency Care’.
The ‘Carson Report’, for which David is probably best known, defined the way ahead and set the standard - embodying integrated services and co-operative staff working as core principles as well as introducing new thinking and new approaches to unscheduled care into the Healthcare community. He was also part of a performance team from the Department that looked at well over 50 NHS Trusts looking at how they operated within their local health economies.
More recently David has also acted as an adviser to the National Audit Office, the Healthcare Commission and the Care Quality Commission in a number of high profile reviews that these bodies have carried out. He has also looked at other health economies including those in Australia (primary care), Italy (accreditation) and Scandinavia and Holland (urgent primary care).
After a background in manufacturing organisations including roles as operational manager, accountant and general manager, Henry has spent some 20 years as a consultant to organisations in both the private and public sector. Much of this work has involved the specification and commissioning of a range of public sector services from benefits, through support services including (for the NAO) a review of the way in which IT services were outsourced by the Inland Revenue to primary and secondary healthcare services. He has advised the Care Quality Commission and the Healthcare Commission not just on their investigations into specific cases (such as the investigation into Take Care Now) but also in their wider evaluations of value for money (such as the report 'Not just a matter of time' into GP out of hours services). A particular interest is in making sure that the data collected through systems is useable and used to support improvement of the service.
Work within the acute healthcare sector has involved him in A&E, Urgent Care services of all types, Diagnostics and Pathology, IT systems , Imaging, Medical assessment as well as in Health Insurance. In Primary Care, Henry has worked with many Out of Hours providers, particularly in benchmarking their performance and looked at the operation of numerous general practices, Walk in Centres and Minor Injury Units. He has also worked with Practice Based Commissioning groups looking to specify services, groups of GPs forming provider service organisations and in looking at mutual and social enterprise models of provider.
Rick was the Chief Executive of Bexhill & Rother PCT until the end of July 2005 where he led a national pilot to develop out-of-hours services and was the lead Chief Executive for the South East within NatPaCT, the national PCT development programme. It was the only PCT in the South East to receive a 3-star award when the new ratings were introduced in 2003 and it consistently featured in the top 10 PCTs in the annual staff survey.
Rick is also the urgent care lead for the NHS Alliance and a special advisor in primary care management. He currently serves as a member of the Department of Health’s governing board for urgent and emergency care.
Rick has worked across a range of sectors and in a variety of roles, including general management, internal consultancy, research and face-to-face with vulnerable clients. He led Access to Health, a Kings Fund initiative in the early 90’s to improve health care for homeless people, was responsible for developing quality standards in a mental health and community trust in Inner London and for developing commissioning within a regional health authority. He is also a practicing psychodynamic counsellor.
We also work with associates who provide complementary skills including:
Chris was half of the team that produced the Healthcare Commission’s 2008 report “Not just a matter of time”. Chris scoped the review which looked at how A&Es, GP out of hours and ambulance services and PCTs worked together to provide an integrated urgent and emergency care service. He also led the analysis of GP out of hours and ambulance services. Most recently he led Care Quality Commission’s review of healthcare for people living in care homes. He has also worked on reviews of medicines management.
Chris’s background is in research and performance management for adult and children’s social services as well as in housing. He started his career managing council housing and (separately) has worked for Crisis. He is a Prince2 practitioner.