Angela Fitzgerald was appointed Chief Executive of HIQA in March 2022. Prior to this appointment, she served as Deputy National Director, Acute Operations in the Health Service Executive.

Angela has 27 years of wide-ranging experience in senior management in the health sector, with extensive experience of driving change and quality improvements. In addition to the development and implementation of hospital policy in the Department of Health, she led major national change processes in the HSE in a range of areas, such as hospital emergency services, the National Care Experience Programme and the National Transplant Services.

Angela previously served as Regional Director for Performance and Integration for Dublin North East where she was accountable for all aspects of service delivery across all hospital and community services in the region service over 1.5 million people. She was also responsible for day-to-day operations in St James’ Hospital for over four years, delivering results across the key domains of safety, access and financial management.

Throughout her career, Angela has advised Government Ministers and Cabinet directly on strategy, policy and patient safety issues including the implementation of recommendations from the HIQA investigation into Midlands Regional Hospital Portlaoise, the HSE response to the Independent Audit of Cervical Check, and the use and oversight of private hospitals to support access to care particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She has also represented the healthcare delivery system on major national strategic planning and policy exercises including the Bed Capacity Review, HSE Trauma Implementation Group, the National Patient Advocacy Advisory Forum, and Voluntary Collaborative Forum. These roles have sought to look at optimising current service delivery, and how services are organised and delivered to meet future requirements.

Angela holds a Masters Degree in Health Economics and has lectured on comparative health policy in healthcare postgraduate programmes.