Chairman will step down (From Worcester News)

Chairman will step down

7:40pm Thursday 29th July 2010 in

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A HEALTH boss who helped turn around the fortunes of Worcestershire’s hospitals is standing down after nearly a decade.

Michael O’Riordan, chairman of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, is to retire from the post after nine years. He announced the news at a board meeting of the trust at Kidderminster Hospital yesterday.

Mr O’Riordan has been involved in many of the changes to the trust, which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester, the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and Kidder-minster Hospital.

These include the ongoing application to become a foundation trust which would give the organisation more independence and more input from patients through a council of governors of which he would have been the chairman.

Mr O’Riordan has also been at the helm during a period which has seen levels of infection from superbugs such as MRSA and C.difficile fall dramatically. There were 57 cases of MRSA bloodstream infections in 2003/04 and eight in the last financial year 2009/10.

Mr O’Riordan, originally a quantity surveyor and the former chairman of Sandwell Health Authority, West Midlands, has seen the financial position of the trust improve under his stewardship.

The trust inherited debts of £6.7 million in 2000 but it has moved towards a state of relative stability where organisation leaders have beeen in a position to apply for foundation trust status.

Other initiatives brought in while he was chairman include Patient Safety First and a campaign to reduce hospital deaths and fractured neck of femur in vulnerable patients on the wards.

John Rostill, the trust’s chief executive, who was himself drafted in to the trust by a group which included Mr O’Riordan, said of the outgoing chairman: “He was parachuted in here nine years ago because of the trust’s difficulties. He has made a significant difference. He has been a good public face to the organsation. He will be missed.”

Mr O’Riordan, whose last board meeting as chairman will be in October, said: “I will depart to the garden or a cruise until I can find something to keep my mind occupied.”

Other members of the trust also stood down at the meeting, including non-executive directors Michael Shepherd and Rosemary Adams and chief operating officer Phil Milligan, who is moving to a management role in the Strategic Health Authority.