Ian Dalton, who recently took over as chief executive of the North-East Strategic Health Authority, is a familiar figure in the region. Health Editor Barry Nelson meets him.

THE man appointed to run the NHS in the North-East a few weeks ago has an impressive track record. He took over as chief executive at the financially troubled North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust in October 2005.

Within a couple of years, with Ian at the helm, the multi-million pound debt was turned around and the trust put on an even financial keel.

Ian has had a number of different senior management positions in recent years, including a stint as regional director for performance for the old Northern and Yorkshire region. Shortly afterwards he donned a flak jacket and helped Her Majesty's Government try to reconstruct health services in southern Iraq following the second Gulf War.

It was after a spell as chief executive at a Cheshire hospital trust that he returned to the North-East to take over the hotseat at North Tees and Hartlepool.

Thankfully, Ian no longer needs to wears a flak jacket, but he retains a steely determination to improve health services in the region.

This interview took place a few days before the latest round of public consultations over the future of the NHS. Ian was among NHS colleagues, patients and public taking part in an inter-active meeting at Newcastle Racecourse this week designed to come up with a vision of where the Health Service is going.

Early on in the interview Ian makes it clear that he believes in the fundamental principle of the NHS - that it should provide quality health care which is free at the point of delivery.

He says he has retained those views since his first big break in the NHS - starting work as what he describes as a "temporary therapist's helper" in Easingwold, North Yorkshire back in the early 1980s.

More than two decades later Ian heads up a multi-billion pound organisation which has the task of getting the best out of the patchwork quilt of hospitals, health centres and surgeries which stretch from Berwick-on-Tweed in the north to East Cleveland in the south.

Ian has no time for doubters who question 'where all the extra money has gone' in the NHS. He says the massive investment in the Health Service in the last decade has utterly transformed health care provision.

"Not many years ago people often waited, sometimes in pain, for 18 months or more for an operation. By December next year we will have effectively ended waiting in the NHS by ensuring patients' treatments happen within 18 weeks and people no longer wait hours and hours in A&E departments to be seen."

But despite the transformation, like the Department of Health, Ian wants more. "We have a lot of ambition. We now need to move from good to great."

While most people will admit that the NHS has got better in recent years, people continue to fear that their local hospital might be downgraded or even closed.

Ian, who is married with nine-year-old twins and lives in Wolsingham, County Durham, says the NHS has constantly to adapt to changing circumstances, but reassuringly stresses that we will always need world class hospitals in the region.

"Most of the changes that happen in the Health Service are driven by the fact that medical technology is now totally different. Patients who would have been in hospital for a week after many operations now have keyhole surgery and are out the next day. "This changes the natures of the hospital. It might mean we need more theatres and fewer beds."

Unsurprisingly, Ian approves of the Department of Health's mantra that health services need to be increasingly delivered closer to where patients live.

That is likely to lead to more local 'super-surgeries' like Bunny Hill Primary Care Centre in Sunderland and more community-based support programmes such as the Early Supported Discharge scheme for people with chronic lung disease in Newcastle.

Another example of change of which Ian approves is the creation of 'protected' NHS treatment centres where routine operations can be performed without the fear of cancellation, such as the surgery centre next to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead.

A few days ago the SHA announced that a £16m new super-surgery is to be built in Hartlepool. In a decade or so a new hospital is likely to be built north of the Tees to replace the ageing hospitals at Hartlepool and Stockton.

Some people find change unsettling, but Ian is keen to sooth public fears. "The public need to have confidence. These changes are driven by a desire to improve care."

Certainly, Ian and the rest of the region's Health Service, appear to be in for an interesting ride