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Professor Sir Bruce Keogh to step down from NHS England role

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh to step down from NHS England role
6 April 2017



Professor Sir Bruce Keogh has announced his retirement from NHS England at the end of 2017.

Sir Bruce, who has been the medical director for the organisation for 10 years, has been appointed as Chair of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.

Sir Bruce said the role ‘has been and continues to be a huge privilege’.

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh has announced his retirement from NHS England at the end of 2017.

Sir Bruce, who has been the medical director for the organisation for 10 years, has been appointed as Chair of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.

Sir Bruce said the role ‘has been and continues to be a huge privilege’.

He said: ‘But the time must come to make a change and I now have the opportunity to focus my attention on improving services for women and children in my home city. I am really looking forward to it.’

In a recent interview with Healthcare Leader, Sir Bruce said suggestions that regional plans to overhaul health and social care services can be fully implemented by 2021 are ‘really ambitious’.

He also said that GPs will become ‘the consultant physicians’ of the health service in the next two decades as the likes of MRI scanners become hand-held and other procedures become ‘increasingly minimally invasive’.

As a cardiac surgeon, Sir Bruce was made director of surgery at the Heart Hospital and a professor of cardiac surgery at University College London in 2004.

Keogh was named NHS Medical Director in 2007, where he served as director general in the Department of Health and oversaw NHS policy and strategy.

In 2013, his role was transferred to NHS England where he was given the title of National Medical Director.

As national medical director, Sir Bruce investigated hospitals with high mortality rates, leading to the CQC’s rating system and special measures scheme.

He was awarded a knighthood for his services to medicine in 2003.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England said: ‘Bruce has given superb medical leadership to the NHS and has been a great source of wisdom and advice to us all.'

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