Neil Goodwin
![]() |
Neil Goodwinneil@goodwinhannah.co.uk+44 (0)7831 88 68 34 |
Neil Goodwin co-founded GoodwinHannah in 2006 following extensive experience as chief executive of a number of NHS organisations.
Neil’s assignments have included independent reviews of board-level governance and relationship issues in hospitals and health systems, hospital acquisitions, reviewing public consultations, strategic issues facing clinical services, public service strategy for ambulance services and the occasional interim chief executive role.
He has also majored on leadership development, creating the first national leadership framework for the NHS in England and commissioning the first region-wide leadership development programme for senior managers based on his primary leadership research. The programme is now on its sixth cohort of participants. He also created the bi-annual alumni arrangements for the leadership programme.
Neil also undertakes board development activities across all types of NHS organisations as well leading initiatives such as the creation of UCL Partners, Europe’s biggest academic health science partnership.
Neil’s 20 year chief executive experience has included over six years at St Mary’s Hospital NHS Trust, London where he pioneered establishing doctors in management positions. His last chief executive post was with the Greater Manchester strategic health authority. The SHA, then the largest in England, was accountable for annual expenditure of £3.5 billion and delivering healthcare to 2.7m people.
During Neil’s time in Greater Manchester the NHS delivered all national targets as well as successful local strategic change, innovation and major capital investment. He is credited with successfully addressing a number of outstanding strategic issues and an inherited £70m deficit, which was turned into a revenue surplus of £100m.
Investment for four new acute hospital developments including Central and South Manchester, a new children’s hospital that opened in 2009, and a new neurosciences centre were all approved under his leadership. The first conurbation-wide patient demand management strategy for elective care was introduced (copied by the NHS nationally and applauded by the Audit Commission); and an independent sector surgical centre, integrated within a local NHS hospital, was developed and opened.
Neil represented the NHS in a Government review of public services leadership; and he was member of numerous working groups including that for the King’s Fund publication, Designing the new NHS: ideas to make a supplier market in health care work.
Neil also led production of the DH report, Recognising, Understanding and Addressing Performance Problems in Healthcare Organisations. Latterly, he worked with the NHS Appointments Commission to produce the publication, The Intelligent Commissioning Board.
Neil is a graduate of London and Manchester Business Schools (MBA, PhD); visiting professor of leadership studies at Manchester Business School, the University of Durham and University College London. He is a former external examiner for master’s degrees in leadership and management at the University of Warwick Medical School.
His book, Leadership in Healthcare, the first such publication set in a European context, was published by Routledge in 2005. He has also contributed book chapters on strategic planning and public health leadership. Neil is a regular contributor to the Health Service Journal On-Line where he writes about leadership and related topics.
Neil has had non-executive director experience as a board member of the European Health Management Association and for five years with the former UK NHS Transplant Authority
Neil is a Companion of the Institute of Healthcare Management and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. He was appointed CBE in the 2007 New Year’s Honours List for services to the NHS.

