A SENIOR NHS leader with three decades of experience in the medical profession, Professor Kiran Patel is the chief medical officer and deputy chief executive of the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust. Joining the Trust in July 2019 as medical director, he would soon find himself leading the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. On December 8, 2020, he made history when he prescribed the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial.
Dr Patel has been at the forefront of developing a new tool to address the NHS backlog, as the heath service remains under severe strain with millions of patients on waiting lists for hospital treatment, and emergency departments unable to see patients promptly. In 2022, the UHCW developed the Health Equity and Referral to Treatment (HEARTT), a tool that allocates priority for patients on the waiting list for planned care according to clinical as well as social factors, meaning the software can take health inequalities into account when prioritising patients for elective care. For Patel, who grew up in a ‘two-up two down terraced house’ in West Bromwich but graduated from Cambridge University’s King’s College, the issue of equity has always been close to his heart.
“As I grew up and went to university at Cambridge and subsequently started working, I suppose I personally experienced social mobility. But then I always wanted to go back and do something for the communities I came from,” he has told a NHS Confederation podcast. And with the HEARTT tool, he believes we now have the capability to move be yond NHS England’s elective recovery plan, which prioritises those who have waited longest, but is prone to fuelling health inequalities.
The tool accommodates evidence based clinical factors and builds upon those to add in factors which drive or are proxy markers for inequality. For ex ample, a patient from a deprived area could sometimes be pushed ahead of another patient from an affluent area, if deemed clinically appropriate. He is well aware that this could open a thorny debate, but he avers that it’s high time we tackle the moral and ethical debates around equity of access to care. “If we are to seriously utilise the potential of the NHS to reduce health inequality, it is time to have challenging moral and ethical debates, accepting the in evitable range of opinion,” he wrote in article in the Heath Science Journal. “How and how far we choose to go down the road of addressing inequality necessitates debate and discussion and whatever we decide to do or not do.” Patel stresses that tool does not make middle-class or affluent patients to wait longer for care, but it reduces the gap in waiting times between different categories, and the research has shown that more affluent people tend to access elective care more than more deprived people, who tend to access unplanned emergency care more. The project has generated significant interest across the NHS.
Speaking at a webinar on Race Equality and Health Ine qualities, organised by NHS Providers in April last year, Patel has revealed that around 30 NHS Trusts across the country would potentially implement HEARTT tool. The origins of his work at the UHCW could be traced back to Sandwell, were the consult ant cardiologist started his career at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust. At Sandwell he developed a prevention programme for car diovascular disease which helped to address health inequality in vulnerable groups. After three years as a consultant, serving his local community, he was appointed as a clinical lead for the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority and has since held several NHS leadership roles.
Before joining the UHCW, Patel has served six years as medical director for NHS England (West Midlands), leading a range of work portfolios and partnerships. He graduated from King’s College, Cam bridge University in 1993, where he met his future wife Emma – the couple has four daughters – and played cricket alongside Mike Ather ton. He was awarded a British Heart Foundation fellowship and did his PhD in Bristol, working on cardiac myocyte contraction. He holds Honorary Professorship Chairs at both War wick University and Coventry University and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He has published widely, not only in the field of cardiology, but more widely on social determinants of health.
In healthcare policy and strategy, he has worked with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the Royal Colleges and the Department of Health. He served nine years, from 2012 to 2021, as a director on the board of the BMJ group to drive globalisation of education and training. As part of that global health system work he advised the governments of Thailand and Indonesia on health system strengthening. He has also advised the Public Health Foundation of India on developing healthcare systems. An ardent supporter of the West Bromwich Albion Football Club, he has got a broader involvement in the world of football, thanks to his research interest in sports cardiology and cardiomyopathy in the athletic heart. He is a cardiologist to many elite football, rugby and cricket clubs across the Midlands, and served in the expert panels of the FA and Premier League. His mission to tackle health inequalities is not just limited to his workplace. He founded the South Asian Health Foundation in 1999, which promotes good health in the UK’s South Asian communities.
The charity provides community engagement, with education and resources delivered at a grassroots level, while developing resources for healthcare professionals and promoting high quality research and development. His parents migrated to the UK from Kenya before Patel was born, and they were a driving force behind his eventual career path. He credits the pair for their “support and sacrifice” and teaching him the importance of work, and the importance of staying humble. “With those ingredients and an ambition to succeed, I was so proud when I not only got to read medicine, but got to read it at Cam bridge,” he previously told GG2 Power List. “I will never forget how proud that made my parents and I thank them immensely for their support and sacrifice.
