Sevenoaks NHS: Stephanie Elsy is new Kent and Medway chair

NHS Kent and Medway, the integrated care board (ICB) that plans and pays for NHS services for patients across the county, including the Sevenoaks district, has a new chair. Stephanie Elsy took up the role today, Monday 12 October.

She arrives from the chair of NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB, where, the ICB says, she was responsible for a £2 billion health and care budget serving more than one million residents.

Angela McNab, who has led the Kent and Medway board for the last six months, returns to her role as vice chair.

Who she is

The ICB says Ms Elsy brings “more than four decades of leadership experience across local government, the NHS, the voluntary sector and the private sector.”

At Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire, according to the announcement, she led the setting up of the ICB, recruited its board and executive team, brought together three predecessor clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and “worked closely with partners to address financial and performance challenges across the system.”

Before that she was vice chair and a non-executive director at Solent NHS Trust and chaired the Peninsula Acute Provider Collaborative. The ICB says she has also spent more than a decade helping NHS organisations with board development, strategy, governance and improvement programmes.

In local government she was Leader of the London Borough of Southwark. The ICB credits her during that period with leading “the successful transformation of the council’s education services following a critical inspection” and overseeing major regeneration and development programmes.

She already has a foot in the county. She recently joined East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust as interim deputy chair and transformation lead, and is relocating to Kent, where members of her family already live, the ICB says.

In her words

“I am absolutely delighted to be joining NHS Kent and Medway ICB as Chair and cannot wait to get started,” Ms Elsy said. “Throughout my discussions with colleagues across Kent and Medway I have been struck not only by the commitment and passion of the people working across the system, but also by the clarity of purpose and ambition for the future. There is a strong sense that Kent and Medway knows where it wants to go and has already established many of the foundations needed to get there.”

She pointed to the ICB’s “four layers of care” model as the part of the plan that excited her most:

“The focus on supporting people to remain independent for longer, strengthening neighbourhood services, improving access to specialist care and ensuring that highly specialised services are available when needed provides a compelling vision for the future of health and care across Kent and Medway.”

On how the ICB buys services, she said: “I am equally encouraged by the organisation’s emerging commissioning intentions and the ambition to move towards a more strategic, transformative approach to commissioning. The opportunity to use commissioning as a lever to improve outcomes, tackle health inequalities, drive innovation and ensure services are designed around the needs of local people is enormously exciting.”

“The challenges facing health and care are significant, but so too are the opportunities when partners work collectively in the interests of the populations they serve,” she added. “I very much look forward to working alongside Adam, the Board, staff, partners, local authorities and local people as we continue this journey together and deliver lasting improvements for the residents of Kent and Medway.”

The chief executive on the appointment

Adam Doyle, chief executive of NHS Kent and Medway ICB, said Ms Elsy brought “an exceptional combination of NHS system leadership, governance expertise and partnership working experience.”

“Throughout her career she has built a strong reputation for leading complex organisations through periods of transformation, strengthening governance, bringing partners together and maintaining a clear focus on improving outcomes for local communities,” he said. “Her experience and insight will be enormously valuable as we continue to deliver our ambitions for the people of Kent and Medway.”

He thanked Ms McNab for her six months in charge: “Angela has worked tirelessly during a period of significant organisational change, providing stability, wise counsel and unwavering support to both the Board and the executive team. Her contribution has been greatly appreciated throughout Kent and Medway and I am delighted that we will continue to benefit from her experience and leadership as she returns to her role as Vice Chair.”

What it means for you

Nothing changes at your surgery or at Sevenoaks Hospital today. The chair leads the ICB’s board, which sets the priorities for the money the NHS spends on Kent and Medway patients, so Ms Elsy’s arrival matters most for the bigger decisions ahead: the “four layers of care” model she describes, with its emphasis on neighbourhood services, and the commissioning plans the ICB is still drawing up.

The ICB’s most recent local move is Steps to Safety, which will link GP practices with domestic abuse services from early 2027. Pressure on those practices is already high: our count of patients per GP found each full-time GP in the district is responsible for about 2,570 patients, and our ambulance response times report set out how long emergency crews are taking to reach Sevenoaks callers.