A career dedicated to the NHS, its patients and staff

During his career, Andrew Morgan had 19 jobs across 14 organisations all over the country. In that time, he was a chief executive officer at eight different organisations.

His earlier NHS career also included a range of director posts at NHS organisations around the country, including in commissioning, performance management, strategy and service improvement.

Andrew most recently worked at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) and was instrumental in the formation of a group arrangement with Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS). Prior to joining ULHT Andrew was the chief executive at LCHS when it received an outstanding Care Quality Commission rating.

Andrew said the time was right for him to step back and hand over the reins to his Group Deputy Chief Executive, Professor Karen Dunderdale. Karen started as Group Chief Executive on Monday July 1.

Andrew said: “After working in the NHS for 42 years, I am absolutely going to miss it. I'll miss the people and the value we add to the lives of patients living in Lincolnshire.

“I remember my first day back in August 1982 - Clerical Officer in a finance department down in Dorset, pre-computers and before emails, and I can't quite believe 42 years has gone by. I love the NHS and I have devoted my entire working life to it.

“Despite all of the difficulties, and my goodness we had some real difficulties in recent years, from the pandemic to coming out of double special measures, I still knew when I went home at night that the place I worked for had had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of people that day. We would have saved lives, taken people out of pain, put minds at rest and shown huge compassion to people. I cannot think of a better way to spend 42 years of your life.”

Andrew spent his last few weeks handing over to Karen. He added: “Karen went through a really rigorous national recruitment process that involved NHS England.

“I like to think I left both LCHS and ULHT better than I found them when I first came to Lincolnshire back in 2014; and I know Karen has her own ideas on how we can keep moving forward for a much improved future.”

At the start of this financial year, LCHS and ULHT came together in a group arrangement known as Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group (LCHG) - not a formal merger - but it brings the Trusts together under a single board and executive leadership team.

Karen said: “I am very proud to be the first substantive chief executive of the group.

"We absolutely should be striving for being excellent at care and innovation, looking at how we can deliver services differently, because we know that continuing to do what we do now in the way that we do it isn't something that is sustainable in the long term.

“We need to look at how to make sure people don't get as ill and as sick as they perhaps do now and actually identify how we can look after them earlier on in their illness or disease progression.”