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New Interim Chief Executive Appointed

Chris Bown - Interim Chief Executive
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (EKHUFT) has appointed Chris Bown as their new Interim Chief Executive, to take over from Stuart Bain, the current CEO, when he retires in March.
 
Nicholas Wells, Trust Chairman, said “I am delighted to be able to announce that the Trust has appointed Chris Bown as the Interim Chief Executive to take over from Stuart when he retires at the end of March.”
 
Mr Bown is a long standing Chief Executive with a wealth of experience in steering NHS organisations through challenging periods of change. He led Poole Hospital Foundation Trust and before that West Suffolk Trust for a total of 10 years. Prior to that, he held Board level Director positions with responsibility for Operations and Corporate Development at Birmingham Children’s hospital. He started his NHS career in London working at both Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals. For the last year he has undertaken a number of interim roles, most recently as Managing Director of County Hospital, Stafford (previously Mid Staffs Hospital Foundation Trust).
 
Mr Wells added “Chris has been appointed for a period of one year. This will give our Trust the stability of leadership which will be important as we strive to make substantial progress with our CQC action plan, resolve the operational challenges we face and, over the summer, take our strategic plans into public consultation. In this way, EKHUFT should be able to make significant progress and hopefully come out of special measures which will greatly assist the process of recruiting a substantive CEO, which we will resume in 2016.
 
I believe Chris will provide the high quality leadership that EKHUFT requires for its next phase of development and I am greatly looking forward to him joining us on Monday 23 March.”