Private health company poaches Blair's top adviser on NHS reform

Tony Blair's chief health adviser, and one of the key intellectual drivers behind the NHS modernisation programme, has been poached by a US health company expanding in Britain.

Tony Blair's chief health adviser, and one of the key intellectual drivers behind the NHS modernisation programme, has been poached by a US health company expanding in Britain.

Simon Stevens, 37, head of the No 10 health policy unit, is to join the United Health Group, which has an annual turnover of $28bn (£15.8bn), as president of its British arm.

In another swoop on the health establishment, the company has also hired Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal and one of the most provocative voices on the medical scene, as UK chief executive.

The departure of Mr Stevens will leave a vacuum at the heart of the National Health Service policy machine. A former NHS manager, he was hired as a policy adviser in the Health Department in 1997 and moved to No 10, reporting directly to the Prime Minister, in 2001. He has been instrumental in driving through controversial reforms, including opening up the NHS to foreign organisations able to offer new ways of working to the NHS. The United Health Group has for 18 months been developing its Evercare programme in the UK, a scheme for keeping elderly people out of hospital by providing services in their homes, and 10 pilot projects were announced by ministers last month.

A senior NHS manager said yesterday: "Simon's departure will be a serious loss - but it could be good because the service needs a little less innovation and a bit more time to let some of the ideas bed in."

Dr Smith, 52, said the new UK company would work with the NHS, not compete against it, to find innovative ways of providing health care. As editor of the BMJ for 13 years, and a member of its staff for 25 years, he has turned it from a grey, academic journal into an irreverent, provocative and consistently readable publication which has become a money spinner for its owner, the British Medical Association.

Although leaders of the BMA have found Dr Smith's outspoken and unpredictable opinions difficult to swallow they have been unable to quarrel with the £6 million a year profits from the BMJ's stable of journals, which were making a loss when Dr Smith took over in 1991.

He said yesterday that the new business offered a new challenge. "I have sat there commenting on the NHS for 25 years and I thought it would be quite interesting to be a part of it," he added.