Dr Pete Calveley, a highly experiences GP and PCT Director, has been appointed as Chief Operating Officer by Four Seasons Health Care.

Four Seasons is one of the UK’s largest independent healthcare operators with over 350 care centres, employing over 21,000 staff.

Dr Calveley joined Four Seasons on a part time basis in November 2005 as Primary Care Medical Director, whilst continuing his role as a GP and PCT Director in Lincolnshire. However, he will now be taking on a full time role, responsible for all of Four Seasons care homes across England, Scotland and N. Ireland, reporting to the Group’s Chief Executive Tony Heywood.

Dr Calveley has extensive experience as a Principal GP in a teaching practice which is involved in the training of nurse practitioners, emergency care practitioners, first contact nurses and extended role pharmacists, all of which are very relevant to the new workforce required for these developments.

In addition to this he has worked as Medical Director of a PCT which has delivered many new and innovative services over the past few years and achieved three stars status on all three occasions. This has included initiatives to deliver GP services in deprived areas through the recruitment of salaried and overseas GPs and the establishment of a single point of assessment service to reduce hospital admissions.

He is also a member of the Forward Thinking Group, an NHS sponsored “think-tank” that reports to the Department of Health Strategy Unit.

Commenting Tony Heywood said; “This is an important strengthening of our senior management team and comes at a time when our activity and workload is increasing as we focus our energies on the growth of the company and improving the quality of our services and development of our staff. 

A huge amount of change is currently affecting PCT’s and Pete’s appointment will help ensure that our current services and our developments are appropriately delivered and have a strong interface with NHS primary care services”.

This is the second similar recent appointment by the Four Seasons Group. In March the company announced that Professor Maggie Cork, formerly Chief Executive of Leicestershire NHS Trust had become Managing Director of The Huntercombe Group, Four Seasons specialised services division.