THE new chair of Somerset's Primary Care Trust in the South West has been named as Jane Barrie OBE.

As well as having a broad range of managerial experience in the local health authority, Jane is also current patron of St Margaret's Somerset Hospice and chairman of Governors at Taunton School. She was awarded an OBE in 2004 for services to the NHS The 14 new Primary Care Trusts across the NHS South West area are replacing the existing 32 Primary Care Trusts as part of the government's ongoing reconfiguration of NHS organisations.

The new Primary Care Trusts will be responsible for NHS expenditure on behalf of Somerset residents. They will be responsible for the delivery of primary and community care to their local population. In addition, they have a vital new role in developing a new system called practice based commissioning, whereby groups of GPs and their primary care teams take greater responsibility for commissioning services for their patients.

The Chair of the South West Strategic Health Authority, Sir Michael Pitt, said: "The new Primary Care Trusts will have a pivotal role to play in the success of the major reform programme for the NHS."

"Leading such an organisation within the scale and complexity of the modern NHS requires skills of the highest calibre and the newly appointed Chairs certainly have that."

"I very much look forward to working with them on behalf of patients and local people as the NHS is transformed into a genuinely patient-centred service in the months and years ahead."