GIRFT is welcoming a new clinical lead for gynaecology, heading up the programme’s work to improve the patient and staff experience across the NHS in England.
Angus Thomson, a consultant gynaecologist at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and the deputy chief medical officer (elective, cancer and diagnostics) at NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire Integrated Care Board, takes over from David Richmond, who retired from the role in December 2025.
Going forwards, Mr Thomson will be working alongside other NHS England programmes, professional bodies and providers, using data to identify variation, develop best practice pathways and guidance, and support trust gynaecology teams to improve. He will be working within GIRFT’s Further Faster elective recovery programme and monitoring the ongoing implementation of GIRFT national recommendations.
He said:
"I’m delighted to be joining the national GIRFT team and excited at the opportunity to help address the challenges facing gynaecology teams and services across the country. Many aspects of women’s health care need further improvement and standardisation and the GIRFT ethos is an ideal mechanism to achieve this.”
Mr Thomson has been a consultant gynaecologist in Worcester since 2005. His clinical special interest areas are minimal access/laparoscopic surgery and urogynaecology. He has always been interested in optimising patient pathways, minimising length of stay and improving patient experience.
He is currently a senior council member for British Society of Gynaecological Endoscopy (BSGE) and chair of the Endometriosis Centres sub-committee. In this role he has helped reshape the accreditation of BSGE Endometriosis Centres and has overseen the development of a new surgical database used across the country by endometriosis centres. As well as setting up the BSGE Endometriosis Centre in Worcestershire, Angus has optimised access to minimal access surgery and shorter length of stay.
GIRFT has been focusing on gynaecology services since 2016, when obstetrics and gynaecology became one of the 12 original specialties for the programme. Now separated from maternity services, gynaecology continues to be one of GIRFT’s core workstreams, focusing on reducing waiting times, transforming the outpatient experience and reducing the time women spend in hospital. Gynaecology is one of the 25 specialties included in the GIRFT Further Faster programme, which brings together hospital trust clinicians and operational teams with the challenge of collectively going ‘further and faster’ to transform patient pathways.
The GIRFT national report for maternity and gynaecology was published in 2021, following deep dive visits to trust teams and analysis of trust, system and national-level data. The report made nine recommendations for gynaecology, aiming to support and accelerate the shift towards making more effective use of primary and intermediary care, providing more choice to women.
More recently, GIRFT has published a set of templates for responding to Advice and Guidance (A&G) requests for 17 common gynaecological conditions, helping to clarify and support communication between primary and secondary care and reduce unnecessary delays. Guidance on best practice for day case hysterectomy, the management of unscheduled bleeding on HRT and post-menopausal bleeding clinics have also been shared with trust teams.
Professor Tim Briggs, GIRFT programme lead and NHS England National Director for Clinical Improvement, Elective Recovery and UEC, said:
“Our 2021 national report for gynaecology showed there were more than 3.6m gynaecology outpatient appointments every year in England, and that number continues to increase, making gynaecology one of the core areas of focus for GIRFT in our drive to reduce waiting times for patients.
I’m delighted to have Angus on board to carry on the sterling work carried out by his predecessor David Richmond. His experience at trust and system level will be invaluable as we continue to support colleagues across England to standardise their pathways and adopt best practice to shape the best possible service for women nationally.”
