NHS England’s medical director of primary care Dr Nikki Kanani is leaving her role to join NHS England’s chief delivery office team as director for clinical integration, initially on secondment.
Dr Kiren Collison, a GP and chair of the NHS long COVID taskforce, is currently acting as interim medical director for primary care.
Dr Kanani has been in her current role since late 2018, and negotiated the 2019 five-year contract, which introduced primary care networks.
She was also responsible for the rollout of the Covid vaccination programme in primary care, as well as overseeing the primary care response to the pandemic – including implementing the standard operating procedure.
Dr Kanani will be supporting the work of the new NHS England programme and it is currently planned that she will come back to the primary care role in a year.
NHS England national medical director Steve Powis said: ‘I would like to extend my huge thanks to Nikki for her hard work and invaluable support as medical director for primary care – Nikki’s clinical leadership formed an important part of the NHS England response to the pandemic including helping deliver the fastest and most successful vaccination programme in the health service’s history.
‘I wish Nikki the very best, as she takes on this secondment to support the development and delivery of the new NHS England’s clinical model for how we deliver care to patients following the pandemic.’
Dr Kanani will continue working with the Covid vaccination team, and Mark Cubbon, chief delivery officer at NHS England, said NHS England is ‘putting in place arrangements to ensure there will be continued medical leadership and support for primary care’.
He added: ‘Nikki has demonstrated strong clinical, strategic, and operational leadership prior to the pandemic and throughout it as medical director for primary care and deputy SRO for the NHS Covid vaccination programme.
‘Her values based, compassionate and inclusive leadership approach will be put to good use as she contributes to the work which is underway to develop the culture and values for the new organisation.’
This story first appeared on our sister title, Pulse.
