Rising star Mark Britnell, CE of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust is clearly a visionary and strategist, as well as ambitious. He runs a major teaching hospital Trust, with a massive PFI rebuild on his books, and a likelihood (for him, certainty) that UHB will become a Foundation Trust very soon. In brief, his tenet was that since 1948 the NHS has been driven by central command and control thinking, with local ‘management’ just responding to central demands and not able to think strategically at a local level. [I had a flash of déjà vu at this point— 10 years ago when we first became a self-governing Trust we had, for a very brief period, a real opportunity to think plan and do at a local level. The problem was that few people actually wanted to play that game, and we didn’t get far before the government changes and the forces of centralization returned.]
Birmingham has always been a tough nut to crack. Medical (private practice) and local government politics never really saw eye to eye. Mark’s approach is to look to the future (it’s often easier to share a distant vision) and then work backwards to remove the obstacles. Sound good, doesn’t it? As a Foundation Trust, the full weight of the Harvard Business Review will be at his finger tips, building value chains with all manner of potential partners, and buying out those that don’t play ball.
Clearly, Mark’s hospital is ready for tomorrow. Is yours?
