Sue Thomas

Sue Thomas’ clinical background is nursing and the main part of her post registration clinical career was in primary care.  Since 1991 she worked nationally in a policy and practice role for Long Term Conditions, mainly for the Royal College of Nursing. During her time at the College she took a 2 year career break with a Health Foundation award to develop commissioning expertise and evaluate how Primary Care Trusts were turning national policy into commissioning intent. This developed her on going interest in service commissioning.For the last 2 years she has been employed as Chief Executive in an innovative post established by Parkinson’s UK, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and Motor Neurone Disease Association – Neurological Commissioning Support (NCS).NCS provides commissioning support to Primary Care Trusts and GP Consortia with a view to bringing patients right to the centre of commissioning. Over the years, Sue has been nurse adviser to numerous Department of Health (England) work streams for example the Expert Patients Programme, DH Risk sharing programme for MS and the National Service Framework Long Term Neurological Conditions (NSF LTNC).  She is currently a member of the NSF LTNC Leadership group. Sue is also a current member of the National Council for Palliative Care Neurology Policy Group. Other roles have included expert advisory roles for NICE Guidelines and Health Technology appraisals, and board member of the Royal College of Physicians National Council for Chronic Conditions until it dissolved last year. Sue is a Florence Nightingale Scholar and Winston Churchill Fellow and has over 150 published articles and 12 book chapters to her name and writes a monthly policy column in the British Journal of Neuroscience Nursing.