Stephen Thornton

Stephen Thornton is Chief Executive of the Health Foundation. He has 30 years’ management experience in the National Health Service, having worked at hospital, community health, health authority, regional and national levels of the service. He spent five years as Chief Executive of Cambridge & Huntingdon Health Authority and five years as Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, the membership body for NHS organisations, negotiating directly with ministers on issues concerning the management of the health service.

Stephen has been a Non-Executive Director of Monitor (the independent regulator of NHS Foundation trusts) since October 2006. He was a member of the NHS Modernisation Board 2001/02 and a Commissioner on the Board of The Healthcare Commission 2003/06. He was appointed to the National Quality Board as an expert member in March 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, was appointed a CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2010.