'Turnaround director' to leave NHS

The Chief Executive of the Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust will leave the NHS next April.

Jac Kelly, leaves after 8 years as chief executive of the Trust coming into the position as a turnaround director in 2006 to combat the trust’s financial issues.

Under Kelly  the Trust has returned a financial surplus for the last four years, despite making £12million a year in efficiency savings.

The Trust will begin seeking a new Chief Executive but in the interim, Andy Robinson, Director of Finance and Deputy Chief Executive, will cover the role.

Roger French, Chairman for the Trust praised the impact Kelly has had on turning around the trust’s fortunes. He said: “She has returned the Trust to financial balance whilst doubling the number of consultants and significantly increasing the number of frontline clinicians – nurses, therapists and care assistants.

“Jac has always been very open that she planned to leave in 2014 and whilst we regret that this time has come, I am incredibly proud to have worked alongside Jac Kelly for the last three years.

“She will be a hard act to follow. The financial and clinical challenge facing her on arrival at the Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust was enormous.

“Her vision for securing local services for the populations of northern and eastern Devon ensures that she can claim a legacy of consistently delivering high quality, well performing and sustainable health services.

Jac Kelly, thanked her staff and praised the work that they have achieved in the last.8 years.

She said:  “I feel extremely fortunate in having worked with so many dedicated and skilled staff, who are always willing to make that extra effort on behalf of patients and their families. Frontline or support, trainee or executive, the progress we have made in the past eight years is down to them.

“We are the envy of the rest of the NHS in terms of our integration with acute and community services and community health and social care services, care that we have run for many years.

“What this means is that we don’t just see patients as an acute episode or a home visit, but as a whole person with needs that we support. I am proud to have been part of this.”

Anthony Farnsworth, NHS England’s Area Team Director for Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, said: “Jac Kelly is departing from the NHS as a Chief Executive and can look back on a long and distinguished career in the NHS.

“She has a truly profound understanding of how the NHS works, and how to manage clinical services in partnership with clinicians.

“She has always focused on what really matters and has used her position to argue hard for what is right, what works well, what is practical and has had the drive to achieve and to liberate the achievement of others.

“Northern Devon has been truly fortunate to have had a Chief Executive of this calibre for the years that Jac has been in Barnstaple and latterly across eastern Devon. She will be widely missed both locally and more widely in the South West.”