Royal Free chief executive resigns

Andrew Way, the chief executive at the Royal Free Hampstead Hospital, which was plunged into financial crisis following installation of a new IT system last year, has resigned.

The problems were so serious at Royal Free that, in October, all Cerner Millennium deployments in the capital by local service provider BT and NHS London under the National Programme for IT in the NHS were suspended.

Problems with the system meant appointments could not be booked and bills could not be sent, resulting in a loss of up to £10m.

An emergency 90-day programme of remedial work was instituted by BT and Cerner to fix 22 problems in the software. In February, this was judged sufficiently successful to allow work on futher implementations to begin.

Kingston Hospital is due to become the next London trust to take the system.

Way’s resignation follows that of Julian Nettel as chief executive of Barts and the London NHS Trust. It also experienced problems after installing Millenium last year.

Before his role at the Royal Free, Way was chief executive officer at Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals, after working as chief operating officer at Hammersmith Hospitals.

According to the Health Service Journal, Way is leaving to start a new job running a group of hospitals in Melbourne, Australia.