Hospital chief resigns, accusing Monitor of undermining leaders

The former consultant physician Mark Newbold has resigned as chief executive of Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, saying that the regulator Monitor had set too short a timescale for improvements to be made at the trust.

Last month the regulator put a condition on the trust’s licence that raised the prospect of forcing a change of leadership.1 It acted after the trust failed to reduce waiting times in the emergency department, for routine operations, and for treatment for cancer, alongside concerns over death rates. Last year Monitor said that the trust was suspected of breaching its licence over waiting times in the emergency department.

Before entering management, Newbold spent 20 years as a consultant specialising in gastrointestinal disease and histopathology at Warwick Hospital and at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust.

Newbold, known for using social media to reach patients and staff, published his resignation letter on his blog.2 He told the trust board’s chair, Les Lawrence, that the trust’s strategy “will bring improvement in time, but … the timescale … will be longer than the regulators wish to see.” He regretted failing to solve the problem of overcrowding, which he saw as the cause of poor mortality figures and staff morale.

Commenting in his blog post on his decision to quit after four years, Newbold accused Monitor of using language in its announcement of enforcement action that was “undermining to leaders, and I wondered if this was the intention.”

Newbold has been supported by other health managers and professionals in social media. Robert Royce, project lead for urgent care at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, tweeted that Newbold showed “knowledge, sincerity & honesty.” Chris Ash, integrated services director at Southern Health, described him as “an example of leadership with real integrity.”

Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy and management at Manchester Business School, said, “How can anyone (even Monitor) think it will improve things for patients at HEFT [Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust] to dismiss Mark Newbold? And who will want that CEO job now?”