Hospital battles to clear patients as 300 in beds unnecessarily<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n Jenni Douglas-Todd, chair of the trust, said Mr French had guided the hospitals under his care through “difficult years”.\n<\/p>\n
\n She said: “It has been a real privilege to work with David.\n<\/p>\n
\n “His demonstrable commitment to the trust\u2019s and NHS values have guided the organisation successfully through some difficult years, including the Covid period.\n<\/p>\n
\n “His unwavering vision for what the organisation could be was set out in the trust\u2019s ambitious five-year strategy and in that time he has delivered many significant achievements.\n<\/p>\n
\n “A highly respected and visible leader, David\u2019s reputation and abilities transcended the organisation, and he has played a wider leadership role within the Hampshire and Isle of Wight NHS system, as well as the city of Southampton.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The trust, which runs Southampton General and Princess Anne, is working to address long elective waiting lists.\n<\/p>\n
\n At a board meeting on Tuesday, January 13, Mr French said there had been a “national push” to eliminate all 65-week waits by the end of 2025.\n<\/p>\n
\n He told the board: “The throttles are fully open in terms of our elective capacity.\u00a0We are expecting that number to come down.\n<\/p>\n
\n “We are hoping to be zero by the end of March.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The trust’s overall elective waiting list stood at 63,399 at the end of November 2025, with 245 patients waiting more than 65 weeks at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David French will leave his position in July, closing a decade of service with the trust, which he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-380187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}