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Helen Tucker

President of the Community Hospitals Association

Community Hospitals Association

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Biography

My areas of interest are community hospitals, intermediate care and integrated care.  I have a particular interest in working with patients and communities who are engaging with the continual improvement and development of the local health and social care services.  I enjoy working with community groups and local health/social care providers to help with optimising the use of community hospitals as valued local rural hospitals.

I am President of the Community Hospitals Association (CHA) and have held positions on the CHA such as committee member and Chair over the past 30 years. I have been impressed with the services and facilities offered in these predominantly rural small hospitals.  I am committed to raising the profile of community hospitals, and sharing evidence on their contribution to community health and wellbeing. The CHA is committed to supporting members in quality improvement, with initiatives such as our annual national Innovations and Best Practice Award Programme which has been running for 20 years. I am pleased to have been involved with this from the start.  I enjoy our networking with staff and volunteers in community hospitals, such as through our conferences, Members Forum and regional workshops.  These events and other communications such as inviting staff blogs enable members to select topics and share their experiences and learning.

I have been involved in community hospitals in a number of roles including managing community hospitals and community services, a Trustee of community services, offering  consultancy, and carrying out research. In these various roles, I have visited over half of all community hospitals in the UK.

With respect to academic work, I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Winchester and value the opportunity to work with colleagues there.  I have worked with the University of Birmingham as a member of their research team assessing the value of community hospitals.  I was also on the project board for a study The University of Leeds on their project board assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of community hospitals.  My PhD at the University of Warwick was on integrated care in community hospitals and community services. This work identified the range and level of integrated working, how quality improvements were being supported, and the impact of this way of working.

I am on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Integrated Care. I am the recipient of the Overall Award for the International Foundation of Integrated Care (IFIC) at their conference 2021 for my paper "One of the Team."


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Blog posts

  • My Improvement Journey: Dr Helen Tucker

    Dr Helen Tucker shares her improvement journey in Community Hospitals, and the key lessons she has learned about the involvement of people in their health and care services.


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