Professor Timothy William Roy Briggs, (born December 1957) is an orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust (RNOH), chairman of the Federation of Specialist Hospitals, Chair of the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance and a former president of the

British Orthopaedic Association The British Orthopaedic Association is a professional association in Britain for doctors who specialize in orthopaedic surgery. History The British Orthopaedic Association was founded in 1918. One of the founders was Harry Platt, who went on to s ...

Early life

Tim Briggs was born in December 1957. He qualified at the

Royal London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and spe ...

in 1982.Professor Timothy Briggs.
Healthcare Financial Management Association. Retrieved 5 August 2017.

Career

Briggs was appointed a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in 1992. He was medical director at the RNOH for 15 years. He is chairman of the Federation of Specialist Hospitals and a former president of the

. He was appointed National Director for Clinical Quality and Efficiency by

Jeremy Hunt Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (born 1 November 1966) is a British politician who has served as Chancellor of the Exchequer since 14 October 2022. He previously served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport ...

in October 2015. When appointed he said that surgical patients were at risk of infections because beds were not “ring-fenced” for those undergoing the same types of procedures. There was a 25-fold variation in infection rates for the same procedure in different hospitals. He had visited 211 hospitals and seen unwanted variation in practice. He thought that some consultants carrying out too few procedures to become sufficiently skilled, and in some places junior staff were given too much responsibility. His report on hip replacement concluded that at least 35 operations a year were needed before a surgeon could produce acceptable results. He produced tables showing the data both for hospitals and for individual surgeons and this had striking effects. The number of infections and failed operations fell, as did the cost of follow-up surgery and litigation. His "Getting it Right First Time" (GIRFT) expanded into 40 medical and surgical specialities.

attributes this to the "unusual combination of competitiveness and altruism that is innate to most doctors". Briggs served as the training programme director for the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital registrar (resident) training programme for over 20 years, supporting and leading the training of hundreds of trauma and orthopaedic surgeons during this time.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Briggs, Timothy Living people British orthopaedic surgeons 1957 births Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England