I’ll lead from the front and expect the board to follow

Harry Turner may be more used to running hotels than hospitals but that may give him the edge in the new-look, streamlined NHS where patients have more choice than ever before about where they are treated and the wounded dinosaurs of the old NHS bureaucracy lumber into extinction.

Mr Turner, who took over as chairman of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust from Michael O’Riordan on Monday, already has a radical agenda and says “everything is for shaking up” and “nothing is sacrosanct” when it comes to reforms of county hospitals. Barrel-chested and plaintalking, he has something of the alpha male army general about him and, perhaps, a touch of Gordon Ramsay – only without the swearing, the chef’s whites and the large array of carving knives.

He said: “The patient comes to the hospital to get treatment, 99.9 per cent get the treatment they want, and the outcome is good.

Rarely does it go wrong – but the patient expects that.

“You don’t get off an aeroplane relieved it hasn’t crashed. You expect it not to crash.”

He also expects the NHS top brass – the board members who make all the big decisions about hospital care – to spend much more time on hospital wards, speaking to patients and staff.

He plans to lead from the front and for other members of the board to follow his lead.

Mr Turner has already served as the board’s vice-chairman and likes to challenge senior board members, including chief executive John Rostill, on the trust’s performance on issues as diverse as MRSA screening to balancing the books of the trust, which has a £320 million annual budget for managing Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and Kidderminster Hospital. The 53-year-old father-oftwo of Bishampton, near Pershore, said: “Nobody remembers who comes second. I’m competitive on a personal level. If I do something, I want to do it to win.

“I’m not interested in coming second. We have got to win. That’s not selfish. The benefit of winning is that the people of Worcestershire have a better acute provider.

“Success for me will be for us to be able to go out to the people of Worcestershire and say – ‘that hospital is a much better place now and the number of complaints has been reduced’.”

He also wants to improve communication within the trust between all its elements and said this was the ‘oil’ that would make the trust run efficiently and allow health bosses to be held to account.

Mr Turner has 30 years of experience with hospitality organisations and his posts include operations director for Travel Inn and Marriott Hotels UK and chief operating officer for Travelodge.

Mr Turner, a magistrate, has thrown himself in the deep end and has already had a midnight visit to A&E, the medical assessment unit, the surgical assessment unit and other wards at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester to talk to staff, including nurses, doctors, consultants and cleaners.

Mr Turner said: “We want to hear what the people are saying. I spent last night in the hospital talking to people about what they think about patient safety and the financial challenge. I have met 50 people in an open forum. In my experience, if we have a problem, the answer is on the shop floor.

You have to go into these places.

“If you run a hotel and you don’t go into the kitchen you will never be assured about the quality of the food.”

Although Mr Turner has not yet met patients while in his new role it is something he is keen to do – and quickly.

One of the first things he wants to look at is patient experience – the journey patients have from their first appointment to the moment they are discharged. He does not like promises that are not kept. He said he would rather be told straight away if something cannot be done within a certain time.

So, does Mr Turner consider his lack of clinical experience to be a handicap?

“I don’t think it matters one bit. I ran 12 golf courses and I didn’t know how to cut the grass but I knew the man that did. What has been good in the past is now accepted. A few years ago if you checked into a hotel you got a colour TV and you were delighted.

Now, if it isn’t HD and flat-screen you’re disappointed.

“We have to become more commercial. We have to have a competitive advantage. We have got to raise our game and the only people who are going to benefit from this are the patients.”

One of the disappointments of the last chairman, Michael O’Riordan, was that he was not able to take the trust to foundation trust status because of concerns about the trust’s ability to cope in the tougher economic climate of the recession.

Foundation trusts have great independence from the Government and more powers to forge links with the private sector but remain part of the NHS.

But Mr Turner said: “I know he was disappointed he didn’t hand over a foundation trust but we wouldn’t be in a position where we could have applied in the first place had it not been for his hard work over the last nine years.”

FACTS ABOUT HARRY TURNER

Mr Turner started as chairman on Monday. His term of office lasts until October 31, 2014. He will be paid £23,366 a year.

He has not declared any political activity.

He has 30 years’ experience in the hospitality industry and has been a magistrate since 2005.

He plans to meet shadow governors in the next few weeks to discuss the trust’s plans to become a foundation trust.

He is confident that the acute trust can become a Foundation Trust by next summer, subject to approval by watchdog Monitor.

He wants to work on plans to make it easier for the trust to work with GP Consortia, the organisations that will replace trusts as the commissioners of NHS services.