James Mountford

James is Director of Quality at the Royal Free London, where his work focuses on embedding improvement into routine work and ensuring improvement efforts address what matters most to staff as well as patients, families and populations.

Before moving to the Royal Free, James was Director of Quality at UCLPartners, an academic health sciences partnership serving a population of 3 million in and around London. In Spring 2020, James was the Chief of Quality and Learning at the NHS Nightingale Hospital London, a field hospital built in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2020-2022 James was Director of National Improvement Strategy for NHS England, the central body for the NHS, where his work centred on embedding improvement and learning into national policy and daily work across the English NHS.

James worked initially as an NHS doctor, then in consulting. From 2005-2007, he was a Commonwealth Fund/Health Foundation Harkness Fellow based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the IHI, both in Boston, USA. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal BMJLeader