Rebekah Cresswell - Chief Executive Officer, Priory

Rebekah has over 25 years' experience in health and social care and is a nurse by background. She joined Priory in November 2012 working as Director of Quality in Priory Healthcare for four years. During this time, she set up systems and processes, governance structures, strategically driven continuous quality improvement, led on safeguarding, health and safety, regulation, patient safety, risk, audit and policies to ensure the delivery of high quality services to patients. She moved to the Group-wide role of Director of Performance and Regulation in January 2017 to drive improvement and lead on regulation interfacing with the seven regulators across healthcare, education and adult social care. In March 2018, she moved to Priory Adult Care full time as Chief Operating Officer to be responsible for service delivery, ensuring the people we support and care for reach their potential and enjoy their lives.

Rebekah joined Priory from NHS North West where she was Assistant Director of Clinical Quality & Patient Safety, where she led on child safeguarding CQUIN and CQC, with oversight of quality and safety for Greater Manchester. This included monitoring QPIs, responding to serious incidents, supporting Trusts experiencing quality issues, assessing and helping prepare organisations for Foundation Trust Status.

On 1st November 2021, Rebekah was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Priory, overseeing Priory’s business and operations in the UK across its Healthcare and Adult Care divisions.

Jim Lee - UK Finance Director

Jim was appointed to the role of UK Finance Director in July 2021 and has UK-wide responsibility for the finances of Priory.

In addition to day-to-day finance activities, the finance department seeks to provide strategic and operational insight to every aspect of the business to help and support the operations to enhance the health, stability and quality of the organisation and our patient care.

Jim joined Priory in February 2011 as Group Tax Director, with responsibility for the management of Priory's tax affairs, its relationship with HMRC, tax compliance and reporting, and providing tax advice on acquisitions, restructurings and other transactions.

In February 2020, Jim took a broader role across the finance team with oversight of, and providing support to, the treasury, financial accounting, sales ledger and purchase ledger departments within Priory, in addition to continued responsibility for Priory's tax affairs.

Before joining Priory, Jim was in private practice with Deloitte for over 10 years. During this time, he qualified as a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser, specialising in corporate tax and transaction support, with a particular focus on the healthcare sector.

Dave Hall - General Counsel and Company Secretary

Dave is a UK-qualified solicitor and joined Priory in 2007 as its first General Counsel. Dave leads the legal and compliance teams at Priory who advise on all legal, regulatory, health and safety, risk management, insurance, data protection, corporate, commercial and property matters.

Dave has considerable transaction experience having worked as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer in the London office of Linklaters for nine years prior to joining Priory. He has been central to the success of Priory's acquisition programme, having acted on the purchase of Affinity, Harbour Care, Peninsula, High Quality Lifestyles, New Directions, CastleCare, Life Works, Progress Care and Aspire.

Louise Griffiths – UK Director of Strategy and Service Development

Louise works alongside the operations teams, to grow and develop new services for people with complex and challenging behaviour, both in residential and supported living settings.

Louise has over 18 years of experience in developing services and leading service development teams in both healthcare and social care settings, having worked at Aspirations Care, Inmind, Care Aspirations, Cambian, Ramsay Healthcare and Cheadle Royal Hospital (prior to Priory owning it).

In April 2021, Louise was appointed to the role of UK Director of Strategy and Service Development and is responsible for looking after business development and strategic growth. This department works to ensure we have the services to meet the needs of people in the UK, drive strategic development of services and maximise occupancy through referrer engagement, service promotion and referral management.

John Dalton - UK Commercial Finance Director

John is a CIMA-qualified accountant with extensive care sector experience, having worked in a number of senior finance roles within adult social care, education and healthcare since 2005.

He was appointed as Commercial Finance Director UK in April 2022, to establish one dedicated UK central operational finance team supporting the needs of the business. 

John has worked for Priory since 2015; he previously held the role of Head of Finance and was then appointed Finance Director of Priory Adult Care in April 2017, when Craegmoor and Amore Care divisions merged into Priory Adult Care. 

Prior to joining Priory, he worked as Divisional Financial Controller at Craegmoor (now part of Priory Adult Care) and Commercial Financial Controller at Embrace Group.

The following members of Priory’s parent company, MEDIAN, are also on the Priory UK Board:

Dr André M. Schmidt - Chief Executive Officer, MEDIAN Group

Dr. André M. Schmidt has been CEO of the MEDIAN group of companies B.V. & Co. KG and its predecessor companies since 2011 https://www.median-kliniken.de/de/.

He has a graduate degree in biochemistry from Leibniz University Hannover with a special focus on theoretical chemistry, and his doctorate in natural sciences in 1998 from TU Darmstadt on protein folding studies. During this period, he was the owner of an advisory business for mobile computing and from 1998 to 2003, he worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. As commercial director, he managed a rehabilitation clinic for three years before taking over the duties of Chief Operating Officer of Casa Reha Holding GmbH from 2006 to 2010. From 2010 to 2011, he was Chief Operating Officer of the McKinsey Hospital Institute in Frankfurt am Main.

Dr Schmidt led the integration of Priory with MEDIAN, to create Europe’s leading rehabilitation and mental health services provider, with a focus on health and social care services in the UK. He remains a member of Priory’s UK Board.

Raimund Hackenberger - Chief Financial Officer, MEDIAN Group

Raimund Hackenberger is responsible for the finance, controlling, mergers & acquisitions (M&A), legal and human resources functions for the MEDIAN Group. He has been in post since 1 April 2023.

Raimund was most recently Group CFO of Hawesko Holding for more than five years. A business graduate, he began his career in 1999 at a subsidiary of Unilever, where he held various management positions - most recently as Director of Corporate Controlling DACH and Director of M&A Europe. Before joining Hawesko Holding, Raimund held leadership roles in national and international consumer goods companies, including four years as CFO at Apollo Optik.

Dr Florian Frensch - Chief Operating Officer, MEDIAN Group

In August 2018, Dr Florian Frensch took over the position of Chief Operating Officer at MEDIAN. He is responsible for purchasing and services, IT, construction and facility management, recruiting and personnel development, digital health, quality management, research and innovation, and communication and marketing.

Dr Florian Frensch was most recently Head of Population Health Management and responsible for strategy and new business areas in the management of Philips for the DACH region, where he worked on projects in the field of digital healthcare, among other things. Before that, he was with the management consultancy Boston Consulting Group for almost 10 years and then led a start-up in the healthcare sector for four years.

Dr Florian Frensch holds a degree in industrial engineering and a Master of Arts in social behavioural sciences. In 2005, he received his doctorate in industrial engineering from the Technical University of Berlin.

Colin Quick – Chief Quality Officer

Colin has worked in nursing since 1992, initially as a Nursing Assistant, then completing his registered nurse training in 1998. Since then, he has worked across a number of NHS and independent sector providers, as well as serving as a Nursing Officer in the Royal Air Force. In his career, he has held both operational and professional leadership roles covering community and inpatient services within mental health, learning disability and physical care services.

Colin joined Priory in 2019, initially as the Group Deputy Director of Nursing and then as the Executive Director of Nursing and Quality. He has supported the professional development of our nursing contingent as well as our Allied Health Professionals, alongside operating as the Executive Lead for Infection Control and Safeguarding. Colin was appointed into the role of Chief Quality Officer in June 2022, where he leads on the operational and strategic approach to quality within the organisation, with a key focus on ensuring that the highest standards of care are delivered within all of our services.

Colin also continues to act as Chief Nurse and the nominated Director of Infection Prevention and Control.

Jayne Stutt - Chief People Officer

Jayne joined Priory in September 2013 to lead on HR for Amore Care, before being appointed as HR Director for Priory Adult Care in April 2017, following the merger of the Amore Care and Craegmoor divisions. Jayne was appointed to the role of Chief People Officer in June 2022 to work strategically across Priory’s operational and corporate services divisions and holds accountability for talent acquisition, HR business partnering and employee relations, workforce and leadership development and colleague engagement.  

Before joining Priory, Jayne worked in local government leading on large-scale restructuring and transformation programmes, and also has significant experience in the not for profit sector, having worked for a housing association for over ten years delivering HR services to their care and support division. Jayne is CIPD qualified, obtaining PGDip in human resources management from Nottingham Business School in 2010.

Dr Adrian Cree – Executive Medical Director

Adrian joined Priory in his first consultant role in 2007 and became a Medical Director in 2011. Following a period working for Partnerships in Care, he returned to Priory when the two organisations merged in 2016. He became a Regional Associate Medical Director in 2017, overseeing the south region. He was appointed UK Medical Director in 2020.

Adrian is Responsible Officer and Caldicott Guardian for Priory, and also oversees our ongoing involvement in high quality research through his leadership of the Priory research group. His responsibilities include oversight of prescribing practices, a focus on enhancing the recruitment of medical staff and the leadership of projects related to record keeping and patient safety.

David Ewing - UK Director of IT

With a background in electrical and electronic engineering, David has worked in IT for over 30 years, spending the first part of his career in the legal and finance sectors, working for technology companies, before moving into the private healthcare sector over 20 years ago.

David has held senior positions in a number of private healthcare providers.

Matt Rowlands –  UK Director of Marketing

Matt joined Priory in 2015 as the Deputy Director of Marketing, focusing on the Healthcare division, before taking on the Director of Marketing role in July 2021. Matt’s remit covers the marketing activities of both Healthcare and Adult Care divisions, supporting operations and business development teams. He also oversees the digital marketing function, including the management of the Priory websites, with an aim to provide a smooth and informative online enquiry experience for clients and referrers.

Matt has over 20 years’ experience within healthcare, including a number of senior marketing roles at Bupa, where he led marketing and communications strategy for corporate, retail and partnerships teams. A key area of focus for Matt, is to help ensure the customer is kept at the heart of our strategy, and to help to normalise mental health discussions for those in need.

Phil Bytheway - UK Director of Estates and Facilities Management

Phil is responsible for managing the provision of estates and facilities management across Priory. He oversees all the major capital projects, estates budgets and other functions provided by the estates team. Initially, Phil joined Priory in 2004 as Estates Manager. He then moved on to become the Head of Estates in 2019 before taking up his current role as Director of Estates and Facilities Management.

Phil is a chartered building surveyor with a BSc in building surveying. Before joining Priory, he was a regional property surveyor for a major brewery and hotel chain undertaking new builds and refurbishment projects.

Alex Ares – UK Director of Projects

As Projects Director, Alex is responsible for the management of strategic projects company-wide. Since relocating from Spain to join Priory 13 years ago, he has delivered a variety of systems and business change projects, including electronic care records, HR/payroll, finance, recruitment, systems integration, digital therapy, CRM and marketing, quality improvements and process change/service improvement. Successfully overseeing the growth of the project department led to the role of Head of Department in 2013 and then Projects Director in 2017.

Alex has over 20 years’ experience within healthcare, projects and IT industries and is passionate to support our sites to deliver high quality care for our patients and service users. 

Elizabeth Hughes – UK Director of Operational Information

Liz joined Priory in July 2013 as a Healthcare Information Analyst and later became Head of Information in the Healthcare division. Whilst in these roles, she developed, implemented and maintained analysis to support the requirements of the division, whilst ensuring data validity and straightforward presentation of actionable information to benefit our patients and residents.

In 2018, Liz became Head of Integrated Information in the Adult Care division, where her role widened to identifying innovative ways to triangulate data across a variety of business areas to identify the overall performance of our services. In January 2022, Liz became the Director of Operational Information, overseeing the information teams in both the Adult Care and Healthcare divisions.

Liz has extensive analytical experience and has worked across a variety of sectors during her career, including health, social care and education. This has enabled Liz to look at data and information from a variety of different viewpoints and to ensure that resulting conclusions can be easily understood by a range of audiences.