Chief admitted faults 10 days ago

Despite his doughty defence of the Whittington's treatment of Rose Addis, chief executive Trevor Campbell Davis seems to know only too well the limitations of his crumbling Victorian hospital.

Days before the furore over 94-year-old Mrs Addis, Mr Campbell Davis was complaining that the Whittington couldn't cope properly because it needed more staff.

In an interview he now appears anxious to forget, he said the Whittington was "a hospital that had been overtaken by the expectations of its patients", adding: "I am not surprised the system keeps breaking down. I need more physical capacity. I need more staff on my wards. The NHS needs to run cooler and better." This sort of candour appeared to evaporate once the row over Mrs Addis flared. Was she treated appallingly because the hospital was overstretched?

Not a bit of it, said Mr Campbell Davis. He even seemed to be suggesting that nothing was amiss with the "physical capacity".

Those who know Mr Campbell Davis say they are not surprised by the apparent contradiction. He is, they say, eminently flexible. His very presence at the head of an important London hospital is proof of his multi-faceted abilities. Unlike most hospital chiefs, who work their way through the NHS, Mr Campbell Davis is a businessman.

He worked in publishing and around nine years ago became chairman of two London NHS trusts, including St Mary's Paddington - the sort of job usually taken by the great and good to put something back into the community. But Mr Campbell Davis, 51, appears to have caught the hospital bug, as it were.

"People feel that the NHS is somehow unique, that running hospitals is somehow different," he said 10 days ago in the Daily Telegraph. "In the past two decades the NHS has experienced a change and the challenge for me now is to manage that seminal change." It is happening fast, he says, and his 2,000 staff have to run to keep up. "Medicine is so much more complex," he said. "They need time to stand back and reflect on their practice. If you have to tell someone they have cancer you need 20 or 30 minutes, not four or five."

He went for the top job at the Whittington in April 2000, securing £90,000 a year and what he says is a 12-hour day. He is known as indefatigable. He is also sole director of two companies registered at his home in Acton. One of them, which he founded many years ago, is called The Not So Silly Training Company. Company records are scant help for anyone trying to unravel the meaning behind the Pythonesque name, but they say the firm is "active".

Mr Campbell Davis is a powerhouse of energy, restlessly pacing the wards and corridors of his venerable charge. He does not like everything he sees, although he says some things are "above average." In fact, the hospital is very average in national league tables. It appears almost exactly in the middle of the rankings.

The statistics - and public perception of his hospital - are crucially important for Mr Campbell Davis and it would not surprise his friends if, as has been suggested, he sought help from the Department of Health over the Rose Addis affair. He is on record saying politicians must explain what is possible within the NHS.