London’s Integrated Care Systems | Rhiannon Smith

Hunter Healthcare was commissioned to identify candidates for the five Independent Chair roles for London’s Integrated Care Systems.

The brief was that these new Chairs had to be, and to be seen as, “big signings” – people with the credibility and gravitas to
operate effectively at the most senior levels of the English NHS and political system. In addition to being leaders of individual systems, the five would also form part of the London senior leadership team, so we needed to identify people who would be both best for the individual systems and best for London collectively. Finally, diversity of thought, approach, expertise, background and experience would be as critical as diversity of gender and ethnicity for this was to be a team of all the talents.

We had only eight weeks in which to deliver a successful outcome. We shortlisted 13 candidates for the five
roles. We ran two stakeholder events and facilitated 65 stakeholder one-to-one conversations with candidates, followed by 22 stakeholder feedback conversations to us. Finally, we supported five interview panels with 19 panel members across six different interview dates, including
interviews by Skype.

We have helped to change the face of the NHS in London with the appointments made from this search campaign, which included three women, two of whom are BAME.