During his career the healthcare veteran has worked as a social worker, with people with HIV and AIDS, and in sexual health, including at King’s College in London.
After spending time as an operations director at two hospitals, he took on his first chief executive role in Croydon before taking charge at Ipswich Hospital 13 years ago.
He then also became responsible for Colchester Hospital when two hospital trusts merged to form the East Suffolk & North Essex NHS Foundation Trust.
Colchester recently received a “requires improvement” rating from the Care Quality Commission after the hospital was inspected in April.
But Mr Hulme stressed to the BBC that his retirement was not a knee-jerk reaction to the watchdog’s report and was not the reason for his departure.
“It is really disappointing some parts of the media have linked my retirement to the CQC report, because there’s absolutely no connection,” he said.
“I made this decision weeks if not months before the CQC report came out, I have been thinking about this for six to eight months, so that is totally untrue.”