Nick Harding

Education and Research

Harding qualified in medicine from the University of Birmingham in 1994. Before, during and after this time he undertook research in a number of areas which formed a basis for his future interest in continuous improvement of quality and safety in clinical settings.

Career

Harding has worked in inner city Birmingham for more than 20 years. As a general practitioner and a medical educator as part of a teaching practice, Harding has been an RCGP examiner and trainer for many years, involved in assessing national standards for general practice. He holds a number of national roles, including member of the Health Education Advisory Group, member of the Nuffield Leadership Panel and co-chair of the Specialised Commissioning task force.

His regional roles include being a member of the West Midlands Clinical Senate and a Home Office-appointed role for the Birmingham Crematorium since 1999.

In 2015 he created and sourced funding from Health Education West Midlands to support delivery of a new type of Primary Care Leadership development programme for future GP leaders. Over 120 GPs successfully completed this one-year programme.

Commissioning Role

Harding is Chair of the Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which crosses two local authority boundaries, covering the whole borough of Sandwell and the western part of the City of Birmingham. The CCG is a membership organisation involving 99 GP practices serving around 547,400 patients across the area. It is broken down further into five Local Commissioning Groups - Black Country, Healthworks, ICoF, Pioneers for Health and Sandwell Health Alliance - that address the needs of the population on a very local level. The CCG has won Health Service Journal CCG of the Year 2013 and 2015; and General Practice Commissioners of the Year 2014. It was rated as outstanding under NHS England's Improvement and Assessment Framework in 2016.

Modality Partnership

He is a founding Partner in Modality Partnership (formerly known as Vitality), which brings together 15 practices for almost 100,000 patients. The partnership has invested in technology so that patients are supported with advice from their healthcare team in a range of ways, including online, over the phone, on their mobile or by Skype.

This new type of super-partnership was referred to in the Kings Fund & Nuffield Trust's reviews of potential primary care models for the future and became a vanguard new model of care (MultiSpeciality Community Provider). The partnership has worked to improve primary care integration and at-scale quality of care in general practice. It is widening this local model for integration with community, mental health and social care services.

Honours

Harding was recognised with a Queen's award OBE in June 2015 for services to primary care, and was awarded an honorary professorship from Aston University for his work in helping to establish the Aston Medical School. He was also named in the Health Service Journal top 100 clinical leaders of 2015 and 2016. He has an honorary Membership of the Faculty of Public Health and an honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians (June 2016).

Personal life and influences

Harding has supported charity work in Malawi, working with local communities to improve health through education and sustained development. He attributes his interest in public health, patient safety and the provision of quality healthcare to his parents and grandfather, all of whom were in the medical profession. Harding's grandfather, Dr Colin Starkie, was the director of public health for Kidderminster and worked with political leaders to introduce the Clean Air Act 1956. His father, Dr Keith Harding, founded the Nuclear Medicine Department at Birmingham City Hospital in 1973.

Harding has written an international book on playing the guitar. He is married with three children.