Business Skills and Commissioning
Meet the Team
> What Do We Do? > Meet the Team > Case Studies > Resources
The Business Skills and Commissioning Programme is jointly run by Elliot Howard-Jones and Jim Timpson, supported by Paul Thomas and the rest of the NHS Elect Team.
Jim Timpson had a successful sales & marketing career in the IT recruitment industry before joining the NHS via the national management training scheme. Over the next ten years he managed an extensive range of hospital functions including capital projects, performance and service redesign as well as running a sequence of clinical services from orthopaedics to A&E. Jim joined NHS Elect with the aim of combining his commercial grounding and NHS experience to develop a programme addressing the commercial deregulation of the NHS and the opportunities provided by the emergence of an Independent Sector in NHS provision.
He has worked on a mixture of hands on projects and the development of related legal and commercial seminars within the programme. Hands-on projects have included being seconded to a major healthcare insurer to work on their bid for the commissioning framework contract, developing market engagement strategies for provider Trusts, setting up the back office systems for a consultant chambers and designing primary care based surgery service models for PCTs. Jim has also designed and commissioned a suite of legal seminars on NHS market deregulation, social enterprise, vires issues and consultant chambers to support NHS Elect members in developing their corporate strategies.
Elliot Howard-Jones has worked in the NHS since 1995, initially as an operational manager at the University College London Hospitals in Orthopaedics and Rheumatology. He held a range of senior operational positions within the Trust, including General Manager for General Surgery, Gastroenterology and Maxillo-facial Surgery. He then left to work as a Management
Consultant on a range of healthcare projects nationally and internationally .
In 2002, Elliot established his own Interim Management and Consultancy Company providing senior support to both primary and secondary care organisations. He has provided support as a Director of Commissioning in a number of PCTs, working with them on Payment by Results, demand management programmes and developing the Choice agenda. He has also worked in the acute sector as a Director of Strategy aiding a Trust in their Foundation Trust application, and setting the Trust’s strategic direction.
Elliot’s areas of interest are strategic resource utilisation in healthcare projects to ensure that frameworks are set to ensure that NHS initiatives act as drivers for change in the system. He leads the network’s support to PCTs on commissioning and provider services, and is interested in how non-NHS organisations can support the development agenda.
Paul Thomas joined the NHS in 1991 and has a wide range of operational experience managing a range of medical and surgical specialties, including Urology, General Surgery, Cardiac, Orthopaedics, Emergency Medicine and A&E.
Paul left the NHS in 2004 to pursue a career working as an interim manager and consultant. He has provided commissioning support to a number of different PCTs, and has also worked for Strategic Health Authorities developing clinical engagement for the Independent Sector Diagnostics Procurement and providing project support for the Foundation Trust Pipeline FT application process.
Paul’s other roles have changed models of care and he has prepared clinical services for external competitive tendering.