LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT


She told NHE: “Our vision at The Christie is to continue providing clinical services and expertise for people with cancer; to keep developing the research that’s com- pletely integral to everything we do; further develop our education and raise our profi le as being part of an academic health science centre.”


Income and outgoings


“No-one’s immune from the cost pressures affecting the wider NHS,” she continued. “We’re all working in challenging times, which will become even more challenging in the future. But we’ve diversifi ed our in- come into different streams – NHS servic- es, a joint venture for private patients, re- search, and our charity – and what we want to do is to be as effi cient and effective as possible across all of those streams, but be conscious of developing services that give value to commissioners and have value for patients.


“It’s about being very clear about what we’re going to do and not do.”


She said she felt the trust had been through a real transformation during her time in charge, explaining: “We’ve been very clear that we run the trust as a business. It’s a business focused on the patient experience, because if they have the best experience, they will choose us and tell their friends and relatives, in the future, to choose us. But each business – and there are those four of them, the NHS services, the joint ven- ture, the research, and the charity – have to demonstrate that they are effi cient, and are creating income and achieving their in- come targets and creating surpluses.


“We’ve brought rigour into the clinical di- visions, to make sure the medical staff are very engaged in that.”


Swift rise


Shaw herself has a medical background as a nurse and midwife, fi rst at Leicester Royal Infi rmary, then she got into manage- ment through being seconded into NHS re-engineering in 1991. That work on ser- vice redesign piqued her interest in general management, prompting her to undertake a Master’s degree, before taking a series of jobs at manager and then director level.


She returned to the North West – she grew up in the Lake District – to take the dep- uty chief executive’s post at Wythenshawe hospital, what was then South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust but which is now a Foundation Trust. “I went in when it has fallen from three stars and glowing


“I was only going to stay for a couple of years in a ‘turnaround’ role again – but it’s now year six for me. It’s just a lovely, fantastic organisation.


What’s different


is running the research business and the charity. For me, as a chief executive, I’m also privileged in that I don’t have the pressures of a busy A&E.”


She is determined not to get stuck behind a desk in the offi ce in which we meet, instead spending as much time as possible “out and about”, talking to staff and patients. Her colleagues say the fact that the staff know she used to be a nurse helps that re- lationship a lot.


Shaw said: “We’ve got 3,000 people here, and I know most of them. They talk to me, and I see them.”


talking about this. We really believe that people who come to a specialised centre get a better experience, and they have the ability and opportunity to enter clinical trials and participate in developing the future.


“We’d like to have the opportunity to offer our care to more people, and offer more choice to people in the North West and Manchester.


“But it’s a dichotomy; if we get bigger, we still need to provide that Christie feel and experience. So the challenge is about man- aging the growth, and the opportunities that go with that growth, without losing the patient experience.”


Cont. overleaf > national health executive Sep/Oct 11 | 27


to no stars – it had waiting list issues and problems, signifi cant fi nancial problems. That was a turnaround job. We worked really hard and we got that good perfor- mance and it became an FT and an excel- lent organisation.”


It was then, still aged 39, in 2005, that she was asked whether she was interested in The Christie, which had, at the time, “prob- lems and a big defi cit”, she said.


White coats


She explained: “What you tend to fi nd with clinicians is that they don’t think about the organisation as a whole, they think about individual practice and know what’s best for their patients, but less on the organisa- tional side.


“I was asked if I’d like to apply for the job and came – it was a place I knew, my grandma was treated here for ovarian cancer.


Bigger and better?


At the trust’s main site in Withington, south Manchester, building work is still going on to upgrade its main reception facilities, fol- lowing the recent opening of its new £35m patient treatment centre, which includes the largest phase 1 clinical trials unit in the world, the UK’s biggest chemotherapy facility and a new unit for private patients.


It also has a site in Oldham and this sum- mer, The Christie opened a new £18m ra- diotherapy centre at Salford Royal hospital, and completed a £6m project to open two new surgical theatres, housing some of the most advanced and minimally-invasive equipment in Europe.


We asked Shaw just how big she would like The Christie to eventually be.


She said: “I’ve been on a ward and had breakfast with the staff nurses this morning,


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