The top-team structure of the Department of Health and Social Care as it takes over directly running the NHS has been revealed to staff.
The new arrangements will be introduced over the next few months, in preparation for NHS England being formally abolished in coming years.
There will be 13 director generals, plus five “national priority programmme” leads, and seven regional directors, who will have the status of DGs (see chart below).
Several will report jointly to the DHSC permanent secretary, Samantha Jones, and to the NHS chief executive, Jim Mackey, who will take on the status of a permanent secretary in the department.
The joint reports include the DG for finance, meaning the department and the NHS will not have separate top-level finance directors for the first time in about 20 years.
Most of the DG and programme lead posts will be subject to competition among current DHSC and NHSE directors, and potentially also outside, HSJ understands. At the moment there are seven DGs in post in the DHSC, and about 10 board-level execs in NHSE.
Date: 29 June