Welcome

I’ve been at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust (HDFT) for about nineteen years – firstly as the Trust’s Finance Director, then as Deputy Chief Executive, and I have been the Chief Executive since February 2022. As my long service here suggests, I thoroughly enjoy working with over 5,000 colleagues that make up HDFT, and working together to do what we do so well – providing care and support to our population when they need it. 

We are team of warm and welcoming people, providing high quality healthcare in both the acute and community setting. We do this with a real focus on our values, as high quality care can only be delivered by talented people working together, having high standards, treating people fairly and being kind to one another. This enables us to do our best for our patients and population, and ensure that they are at the centre of what we do. 

The Trust has always had a strong reputation for being a great place to work, and this is evidenced through feedback from colleagues. We are building on this and are in the process of implementing a continuous improvement approach (HDFT Impact) to enable colleagues to deliver improvements and be empowered to make things better in their daily working lives. 

Whilst we deliver well against many indicators, we continue to be ambitious and are restless to improve further. We are developing our partnerships with our acute hospital neighbours, especially Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, to provide better, more resilient services; we are developing our local integrated partnership, being a provider ourselves of secondary care, community care, and domiciliary care, and being a strong partner with our primary care, social care, and mental health colleagues; and we are expanding our children’s public health services, where, as the largest national provider of these services, we are now working in partnership with eleven Local Authorities across the North of England.

It’s an exciting time to join us – and that’s before I mention implementing a new EPR, and delivering a significant capital programme to improve facilities on the hospital site.

So, we are ambitious to deliver better services, and to help us we’re looking for someone to join us who shares our values, who shares our ambition, and who wants to be a part of our team. Having someone who can inspire the workforce, bring professional confidence to the role, and ensure we retain a focus on quality and safety, will help us as we look to improve.

I hope that you’ll see us as a great team to join, and find HDFT a place to continue to personally grow whilst being a big part of our efforts to be an exceptional provider of healthcare and a first class employer. I, and the rest of the team, look forward to meeting you. 

Best wishes 

Jonathan Coulter, Chief Executive