Tom Downes

National Clinical Director for Older People, NHS England

Tom completed medical training at Guy's Hospital, London in 1993. He has been a Consultant Geriatrician at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals since 2003 and gained his MBA from Nottingham University Business School.

In 2009, Tom undertook a Health Foundation Quality Improvement Fellowship at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston, USA and on his return to Sheffield developed the role of Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement. He completed his MPH at Harvard University in 2011. In 2013, Tom was appointed Honorary Professor at Sheffield Hallam University.

Tom has facilitated the redesign of acute frailty care in Sheffield using improvement method. The geriatric medicine team have designed and, in 2012, launched a seven-day multidisciplinary Frailty Assessment Unit achieving significant reductions in length of stay and mortality. Subsequently, Tom coached the transformative redesign of discharge of older patients with frailty, innovating the concept of ‘Discharge to Assess’. This delivered an improved patient experience while reducing hospitalization by thousands of bed days.