Philip Hewitson

Philip Hewitson trained as a Chartered Accountant before joining the NHS in his native Sheffield. His career in the NHS spanned 30 years - in the early period fulfilling roles as finance director and then, from the mid 80s onwards, as chief executive of a number of NHS organisations. During the mid 90s, he was also an NHS Advisor to the Department of Health on primary care and the development of health commissioning. Latterly, he led the NHS National Shared Services Initiative to modernise business support functions (finance, HR, Procurement) across the NHS before leaving and establishing his consultancy practice in 2003.

Philip has extensive experience of change management and benefits realisation in the NHS. Among other things, he led a successful bid for NHS trust status for hospital and community services with the full support of hospital consultants and local family doctors.

He established one of the first commissioning organisations for primary health care practice with fully delegated budgetary responsibility as a prelude to – and influencing - national health policy. He has overseen the delivery of major service strategies for older people, the mentally ill and those with learning disabilities, which have seen the closure of outmoded institutions and service reprovisions in community settings (often in highly charged political environments), with the active support of all agencies, individuals and local communities. Also, he has commissioned major acute services projects and rationalised hospital provision successfully to improve throughput, service quality and outcomes.

His last chief executive post in the NHS saw him establish two national shared services centres initially providing financial services to the NHS using state of the art web based technology to enable activity to transfer from local finance departments, achieving significant reductions in head count underpinned by a successful HR change management process.

Since 2003, Philip has established a successful consulting practice and developed long term working relationships with a number of national and international organisations. Work has centred on strategic planning and development, the management of change and performance management, commissioning and new models of provision. His work has included international assignments as well as working in the UK on process re-engineering and modernisation. He has also worked with the Department of Health on the NHS Choose & Book programme as an ‘Executive Lead’, leading the Implementation Support Team for London, one of the most challenging implementation areas in the country.

Philip holds professional qualifications in senior executive coaching and mentoring and has a number of board level coaching clients as well as contributing to the Department of Health’s Framework Contract for PCT Board Development.

January 2009