Daniel Elkeles, moving from CEO of the London Ambulance Trust to NHS Providers. He is the former chief executive of the Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust.

In May Daniel Elkeles will become the £240,000 a year chief executive of NHS Providers, a membership body that covers all hospital, mental health, ambulance and community trusts. His job as NHS Providers will be to “to deliver high-quality, patient-focused care by enabling them to learn from each other, acting as their public voice and helping shape the system in which they operate.”

He will also following the demise of NHS England be a key link between the trusts and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and the PM Sir Keir Starmer, whom he met in his present role as CEO of the London Ambulance Service.

His brief as NHS Providers say is to “build effective relationships with key stakeholders in central government, with regulators and across healthcare; champion member interests and raise their profile positively in the media.”

His appointment was lauded in the trade magazine the Health Service Journal, while the chair of NHS Providers, Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, said:

“He will spearhead our new strategic vision and help members deliver improvements for patients, service users and the communities they serve during a period of immense change and challenge in the health service.

“We have been through a robust process to find the right individual to provide leadership and support for our members, to influence key decision makers, and inspire and lead our staff team, reflecting our values and our commitment to becoming an anti-racist organisation.”
The HSJ went further saying: “During his time at Epsom and St Helier, Mr Elkeles led on plans, and secured funding, to build a brand new £500m specialist emergency care hospital in Sutton.

He also oversaw a “significant improvement” in patient care, quality, finance and leadership, culminating in the organisation being rated as “good” by the CQC.

The CEO also led on initiatives to improve culture and morale, resulting in Epsom and St Helier having strong scores in the staff survey in measures about equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as staff health and wellbeing.”

What is missing from this plaudit is that the main hospital in that trust, St Helier, is falling down and in desperate straights with leaky roofs, brown water in the taps, and nothing is going to be done to replace it until 2036 under Labour’s current hospital building programme. Nor does Mr Elkeles appeared to have done anything much about it when he was chief executive.

But far worse this ” robust process” to select him as the best person for the job seems to have missed two rather key and worrying incidents in his career at St Helier. One led to prolonged employment tribunal hearings, the other reached the desk of Sir Robert Behrens, the former health service commissioner.

The employment tribunal case involved an extremely competent doctor who was dismissed after being branded as ” unfit for purpose” – a legal term that doesn’t exist for people -at a hearing organised by the trust. I am not naming her in this article but people may find part of the story familiar to readers of my blog.

What I am concentrating on is the role of the chief executive in dealing with her case.

Among the papers released for the tribunal were private emails between Mr Elkeles and her, which then became public documents.

In one Mr Elkeles offers a deal for her to leave the trust and escape what would amount to a disciplinary hearing if she drops any action against the trust.

He wrote: “We ensure MYT[ Mid Yorks NHS Trust] agree that you can go there and we jointly set up with them the required training and support
2) ESTH will pay your salary for a period of 6-12 months (to be agreed) whilst you are at MYT
3) At the end of the agreed 6-12 months period ESTH will no longer be your employer
4) ESTH agree to cease the MHPS process[ this was a hearing questioning her competence]which means we can find a way to ensure you are re-validated (not my area of expertise but i am sure there will be a
way)
5) You need to drop all the actions you are taking against ESTH.
If we can agree this then I would hope that everyone can move forward positively.”

When she refused to do this he wrote back: “I made a proposal on how to provide a constructive ending to this process on Friday. I did not expect to receive this type of reply from you which in my view does nothing to try and find a solution to this issue but just perpetuates the current impasse we seem to have reached. I therefore withdraw my offer and any input from me as CEO to resolve this informally. The hearing that is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday next week should continue as planned and reach whatever conclusion the panel believe is appropriate.”

What he was asking was that she withdrew any allegations against the trust of sexism and racism ( she was the sole woman at that level in that department and from an ethnic minority) and also hide a whistleblower claim about an avoidable death of a heart patient there which the trust admitted later in public they avoided reporting to the local coroner.

Her lawyer also produced statistics showing that despite the trust employing, like most London trusts, a very diverse range of people, it did not have a very good record in treating them.

As far as validation was concerned the General Medical Council revalidated her anyway – despite multiple claims of incompetence from the trust which were all dismissed by an independent medical expert asked to examine them.

The second case which involved the widow of a patient who died in agony at St Helier Hospital with nurses refusing to give him pain relief was covered on my blog. You can read the case here.

Her complaint to the Health Services Commissioner about his treatment led an apology from the chief executive but other matters by the management were brushed under the carpet. This included the fact that Robert Sheppard had picked up a bacterial infection called klebsiella which attacks people with a weak immune system and it was never notified by the hospital to the authorities, In fact his initial death certificate which would had to be provided by the hospital’s doctors airbrushed out that he had the infection.

Wendy , his widow, said:” Dying with dignity was something not given to Robert. I will never forgive St.Helier Hospital. It’s failures towards Robert were ‘swept under the carpet’ by the Hospital management.  My complaints were misconstrued to make St.Helier look in a better light and incidents that happened weren’t recorded in Robert’s medical notes so I am told. “

All this raises questions about how Daniel Elkeles will do in his new job. Will he really speak truth to power or will he bury issues from public scrutiny to protect the reputation of the NHS trusts , who are his members? Will patient safety and equality and race issues be tackled with vigour or sacrificed to make sure his organisation gets a good press.