Director of Integration joins EEAST

The Trust welcomes a new Director this week as Kate Vaughton joins the team to be our new Director of Integration.

Kate joins us from Suffolk and North-East Essex, where she has been Chief Operating Officer of West Suffolk CCG since 2016 and the Director of Integration for West Suffolk Foundation Trust and the Lead Director for the System Alliance from 2019.

Kate completed the NHS Management Training Scheme in the East of England before moving to London, where she held several senior operational roles within Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s hospitals.

She then moved to Suffolk to work with the regional assurance team, supporting a portfolio of Trust boards managing performance, governance and strategy, as well as creating and overseeing the regional quality improvement and savings programme. She later joined the North-East Essex CCG board as chief operating officer supporting the turnaround of Colchester hospital.

With significant experience of leading on large-scale redesign and recovery programmes, Kate is passionate about the scale of the new opportunities integration now gives us to address inequalities and transform public services. Through leading the system response to Covid and the vaccination programme over the last couple of years she has been able to evidence how working across organisational boundaries can support front line staff to support people and communities using integrated operational models.  

Kate said, "I am really looking forward to joining EEAST and ensuring that we have significant involvement in the development and direction of the newly formed integrated care systems, place based alliances and patient pathways. It is important that we have a strong voice in the new Integrated Care Systems and grown our own ability to work in partnership, so that the emerging plans support and enhance the work you are already doing to deliver the best possible care for our patients. I look forward to meeting many of you over the coming weeks and months."

Published 14th February 2022