A SENIOR NHS leader and practising cardiologist, Professor Kiran Patel has built a reputation for combining clinical credibility with the willingness to tackle some of the health service’s most difficult institutional challenges.
When he arrived at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) in March 2024 as group chief medical officer and deputy chief executive, Patel quickly ordered an independent review into the trust’s international training fellowship programme – a decision that would soon place him at the centre of a sensitive controversy.
The review, conducted by KPMG, revealed weaknesses in oversight of the scheme, under which hundreds of doctors from Pakistan had worked at the trust through third-party arrangements between 2017 and 2025. Patel acknowledged that mistakes had been made but emphasised there was “no suggestion, or findings, of impropriety or fraud by any trust employee”.
Under his leadership, the trust moved to reset its international fellowship programmes, end certain external arrangements and offer the remaining fellows directly employed posts, alongside introducing stronger governance and recruitment safeguards.
The episode illustrates the scale of the challenge Patel accepted when he joined one of the NHS’s largest trusts, employing more than 20,000 staff. UHB had already been grappling with reports of a toxic workplace culture, including bullying and discrimination, and Patel was recruited in part for his experience in leading complex organisational reform.
“The easiest decision was to say no and be comfortable where I was,” he has said of the move. Instead, he chose what he viewed as the more difficult task of rebuilding trust inside the organisation while ensuring patient care remained paramount.
Patel has been a practising consultant cardiologist since 2005 and continues to see patients alongside his leadership responsibilities. A graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, he later completed a British Heart Foundation-funded PhD at the University of Bristol. His career has spanned senior clinical and strategic roles across the NHS, including six years as medical director for NHS England in the West Midlands and five years as chief medical officer and deputy chief executive at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire.
It was there, during the Covid-19 pandemic, that Patel briefly found himself part of medical history. On 8 December 2020 he prescribed the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine outside a clinical trial to Coventry grandmother Margaret Keenan – the moment the UK’s vaccination programme formally began.
Beyond the NHS, Patel has long championed health equity, particularly within British South Asian communities. As a junior doctor in Bristol he founded the South Asian Health Foundation in 1999 and has chaired its trustees ever since, helping grow it into a widely recognised voice on cardiovascular risk, diabetes and wider health inequalities affecting South Asians in the UK.
Despite his demanding portfolio, he maintains a disciplined routine outside work, running regularly and holding a season ticket at West Bromwich Albion. “If you're physically healthy, you're mentally healthy,” he says. “I want to be a role model as well.”
ENDS