As Chair of this large integrated Trust providing tertiary, secondary, community and primary services from two acute and six community hospitals in the Tees Valley and parts of North Yorkshire, Deborah was recruited in 2008 to bring the Trust to Foundation Status, which was gained in 2009.
Working with three consecutive CEOs, she drove a major transformational change programme in the organisation, which employed more than 9000 staff and had a turnover of £660m, raising employee engagement and setting aspirational targets for international quality benchmarking. Deborah completed her term in 2016, when the Trust was rated Good by the CQC, having worked through a financial turnaround since 2013 which made £90m of efficiencies over three years whilst improving quality and achieving some performance standards amongst the best in the UK for some of the most deprived communities in Europe.