HCA Healthcare, the world’s largest private health group, is helping junior doctors make their next career move. It has created a fully-funded fellowship programme, in partnership with Cass Business School, which aims to support and develop doctors with ambition to become future trust chief executives or clinical directors. “We set out to attract the brightest people – those who see themselves as future leaders,” says HCA Healthcare UK chief medical officer Dr Chris Streather who leads on the fellowship, “and I was keen that we recruit on the basis of talent, not experience.”
The launch of the chief medical officer clinical management fellowships coincided with the announcement by health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, that he wants to see more doctors take on NHS leadership roles in the next decade. Currently only 54% of NHS managers are clinicians compared with 74% in Canada and the US, and 94% in Sweden. And although only a third of NHS chief executives are doctors, there is established evidence that the best performing organisations are those run by clinicians.
Dr Amanda Goodall and Dr Amit Nigam, from Cass Business School in London, will co-deliver the executive masters in medical leadership qualification which the fellows will complete as part of their leadership programme. She also undertook research which found that 25% of the highest ranking cancer hospitals in the US had chief executives who were doctors. And around a third of its top 100 units for digestive disorders and cardiac care were also doctor-led. “There is a simple correlation – the most highly ranked hospitals … are more likely to be led by a doctor than a professional manager,” she says.
Goodall says the masters degree, which the fellows will complete part-time, has been designed exclusively for doctors and will be endorsed by the faculty of medical leadership and management – the organisation which sets the gold standard for medical leadership in the UK. The HCA fellows will be among the first cohort of junior doctors due to commence the course in September. The qualification includes eight modules, among them managerial accounting and business planning, managing people and change in healthcare and regulation policy and strategy in health. “The course is designed to help them think differently,” says Goodall.
HCA Healthcare UK is offering eight two-year fellowships to start in August. The scheme is open to junior doctors from the private or public sectors who are about five years post-qualifying and four years away from achieving consultant status. HCA Healthcare UK have been especially keen to hear from those with a background in critical care, oncology or paediatrics. “For the next cohort, we want people who can answer questions thoughtfully and when they make assertions about their skills and experience they can back them up with evidence,” says Streather. “We don’t want identikit people – we will need for example people who are good at handling data but equally we are after those who are charismatic.”
The fellows will spend 30 hours a week in their clinical speciality at an HCA UK hospital in London or Manchester; another 10 hours will be spent on hospital operational roles, project work and completing the MSc at Cass.
Each fellow will have their own senior doctor mentor to support them through the programme as well as access to state-of-the art facilities. HCA Healthcare UK has invested £500m in the last 10 years to give clinicians and patients access to cutting-edge medical technology. It runs six hospitals in London – including the Portland Hospital for Women and Children which is the only private-run hospital of its kind in the UK. It also has other sites in Manchester and Essex.
“A lot of what we offer is different from the rest of the independent sector. We specialise in complex and acute medicine – providing care right across the board from general practice to bone marrow transplants,” Streather continues. “The majority of the consultants who work with us also hold positions at leading teaching hospitals and deliver complex tertiary care. So the fellows will be exposed to quite complex medicine and at the same time be taught by senior people experienced in complex care.”
HCA Healthcare UK already has a number of private-NHS partnerships with some of the nation’s leading teaching hospitals including University College London Hospital and The Christie, Manchester. The creation of the fellowship is a natural extension of those successful relationships.
“Our aim, through this programme, is to develop ambitious doctors who want to deliver great care and great medical practice,” he says. “And at the end of the two years they will be able to feed this back and build that leadership capacity for the whole of the NHS.”
