It was a pleasure to meet Tracy Bullock, Chief Excutive of University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust.
Tracy came in just over 9 moths ago with a challenging situation to sort out the finances and services of the Trust. As someone who was a frontline nurse and continues to get her scrubs on and get stuck in, I have confidence that she can turn things around.
I am pleased to see that the Trust are due to hit their financial control target and over deliver which means more money reinvested for the frontline.
However, there is a big strain on the Royal Stoke University Hospital, and that is the disastrous PFI deal that costs around £15 million per year to simply service the debt.
I will work with Jack Brereton and Jo Gideon to see what we can do to rid our hospital of this and have that money going to the front line, where it belongs.