Jim Easton Plenary Presentation – Quality Forum 2023

Jim Easton
Chief Executive, Practice Plus Group

Jim Easton has been an executive in the health care system in England for over 30 years.

He has held leadership positions in hospital services, mental health, primary care and national policy.

He was the Chief Executive of York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, a high performing 700 bed hospital in the north of England.

He held the Chief Executive position for the South Central Strategic Health Authority, where he was responsible for the delivery of all healthcare services for a population of 5 million people in the south of England managing a health care budget of £8b.

In 2009 Jim took on the role of National Director of Transformation for the National Health Service (NHS) in England, responsible, amongst other areas, for the programme to deliver £20b of efficiency savings whilst improving quality across the whole range of NHS services nationally. When he left this role at the end of 2012 the National Audit Office independently assessed that the first three years of the programme had successfully delivered its challenging objectives.

In February 2013 Jim took up post as the Chief Executive of Health for Care UK, a large privately owned provider of health care services to the NHS in England, providing around £500m of surgical, primary care and urgent care services to the NHS. Care UK is innovating in new models of primary care and elective surgery across England and has rebranded on 01 October 2020 to The Practice Plus Group.

Throughout his career, Jim has had a deep interest in the application of quality improvement approaches to the delivery of improved quality and value of healthcare services, and the role of leaders in achieving such improvement. He is regularly asked to speak nationally and internationally on these issues. In 2023 he was asked by UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to advise nationally on the post pandemic recovery of the NHS alongside his current role.