Jane Close

Originally from Teesside, she trained as a Registered General Nurse in Harrogate then moved to Leeds where she worked as a staff nurse in medicine, cardio-thoracic ITU and community nursing.

Returning to the North East Jane completed a BSc (Hons) in Community Nursing and was a District Nursing Sister for a number of years before leading the work across Teesside on the implementation of extended nurse prescribing. She went on to hold a number of senior management positions across a wide range of community services.

Before moving to Locala she worked in one of the largest integrated Trusts in the country and whilst her role was still managing community services she led on a number of projects, including supporting admission avoidance and reducing delays in discharge. She was part of a team that won a national award for developing INR digital self-testing as well as a successful 'Healthy New Towns' bid as part of a frail elderly service. The resulting system saw reductions in admissions from care homes from 45% to 28% per month, which was consistently maintained.