Samantha in the Vanguard

The arrival of Samantha Jones as the first ever Chief Operating Officer for No 10 Downing St was heralded by a mash-up of Soviet rhetoric and management speak-ak. 

"Action to accelerate the defining mission of the Prime Minister to level up the country has taken a step forward today, with the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary and Chief Operating Officer to improve the Number 10 operation."

It turns out the new Permanent Secretary is actually 'interim', signing up for just six months. 

Samantha started out as a student nurse 32 years ago, and pushed her way onto an NHS management trainee course within months. Until April last year, Samantha was CEO of Operose, operating 20 big GP practices and 26 opthalmology clinics for the NHS, mainly across the Midlands; Operose is a subsidiary of Centene, a US healthcare firm which reported revenues of $126.0 billion for the full year 2021, representing 13% growth year-on year.  From April, she became an 'Expert Advisor' to Boris Johnson. 

She can do management talk. Try some of this, from 2015. 

In 2018, the National Audit Office reported "The original intention to expand the vanguard programme was not realised because funding was reallocated to reducing trusts’ financial deficits.... Ultimately, the programme contained one wave of vanguards, rather than six waves as had been originally modelled. As a result, NHS England planned to save £360 million a year from 2020-21, rather than the £1.4 billion it had originally hoped for."