A Sunderland GP who has worked in the City for almost ten years is set to take up an exciting new role to help transform how health and care support is delivered outside of hospital and closer to local communities. 

Dr Fadi Khalil is a practising GP who has worked in Sunderland since 2010 and looks after patients at The Broadway Medical Practice in Springwell and at New Silksworth Medical Practice. He moved to the North East in 2002 to build his medical career after graduating in Egypt. 

Working with clinical leaders across the NHS and social care, Dr Khalil is set to become medical director of All Together Better – a formal alliance of health and care partners* working together across organisational boundaries to improve how care is co-ordinated and delivered across Sunderland. He will work closely with the chair, Dr Martin Weatherhead and managing director, Philip Foster and as part of All Together Better’s leadership team. 

As medical director Dr Khalil’s key responsibility will be to champion the clinical transformation of services outside of hospital in community settings and think about new ways of delivering health and care services which are fit for the future. 

All Together Better involves all parts of the health and care system in Sunderland working together to improve community-based services in order to meet the ever growing demands being placed on the NHS and social care. It has three core aims to: 

  • deliver more personalised, pro-active and joined up care 
  • improve peoples’ experiences of using health and care services and their clinical outcomes; and 
  • support people to live longer with a better quality of life. 

Commenting on his new role Dr Khalil said: “I am very passionate about providing high quality, seamless proactive care to the people of Sunderland and am delighted to have this opportunity to build upon the strong foundations already in place as we look to improve services even further. 

“Some fantastic work has taken place over the past four years through the vanguard programme but we cannot stop there. We now have a unique opportunity to harness the collective strength and wisdom of all partners to think even more radically about how we can do things differently in the future for the benefit of the people we serve.” 

All Together Better is one of three core pillars of transformation across the local health and care system. It is focussed on boosting out of hospital care and redesigning pathways of care in the community to make it easier for people to get the care and support they need. 

Transformation of care ‘outside of hospital’ is taking place alongside the existing Path to Excellence programme to improve hospital-based services. A third pillar of transformation is also underway on ‘prevention’ working closely with both local authority partners in South Tyneside and Sunderland to improve population health. 

Dr Martin Weatherhead, Chair of All Together Better and a GP in Southwick, said: “Having Fadi involved as clinical lead will be pivotal as we look to fundamentally change and improve the way care is delivered in our local communities across Sunderland. 

“Most NHS care takes place outside of a hospital setting and it is vital that we place a really strong emphasis on transforming the way we deliver care to keep people well at home and in their own community. Not only will this be better for patients, it will also help reduce health inequalities and the pressure on specialist hospital services which should be used solely for those aspects of care which can only be safely delivered in hospital. 

“Changing long standing ways of doing things is certainly not an easy task in an organisation as big and complex as the NHS, but I am confident in Fadi and his ability to inspire positive change to create a system which is fit for the future.”