Patient pathway manager

We are delighted to offer this exciting opportunity for a high calibre individual to join Womens Sevices at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust . The role offers an excellent opportunity for a decisive and dynamic individual with line management experience to expand their knowledge and skills. Previous leadership and NHS experience is essential. Applicants must possess excellent communication, collaboration and team working skills. The successful applicant must demonstrate strong organisational skills and be analytical, adaptable and motivated. The creation and maintenance of effective relationships at all levels will be a vital part of this role as you will be responsible for promoting the improvement and quality of administrative practices to support patient care. You will be a motivational team leader for service improvement and work collaboratively with all staff across multiple disciplines to adopt digital change and new ways of working. To co-ordinate and failsafe the patient journey from referral to treatment including long term follow-up within directorate to ensure a timely and effective delivery of patient care. To provide line management, senior support and expert knowledge to the team of directorate secretarial and administration staff. To work with consultants and service lead to improve pathway delivery. To oversee all administrative and clerical processes to enable a high quality, effective, patient focused service to be delivered. The post holder will ensure that standard operating procedures are followed, ensuring achievement of all performance targets. The Manager will be responsible for providing regular updates on performance and the escalation of issues which hinder the delivery of a smooth patient pathway to the Operational Manager. The post holder must be familiar with RTT pathways and procedures to enable effective management of our patients and their appointments. We employ more than 6,500 staff who deliver compassionate care from our two main hospitals, Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary as well as in community sites, health centres and in patients’ homes. We also are incredibly proud to have almost 150 volunteers here at CHFT. We provide a range of services including urgent and emergency care; medical; surgical; maternity; gynaecology; critical care; children’s and young people’s services; end of life care and outpatient and diagnostic imaging services. We provide community health services, including sexual health services in Calderdale from Calderdale Royal and local health centres. These include Todmorden Health Centre and Broad Street Plaza. We continue to modernise and invest in our health services to build on our strong reputation. Foundation trusts are public leaders in improving quality in health services. They are part of the NHS – yet decisions about what they do and how they do it are driven by independent boards. Boards listen to their Council of Governors and respond to the needs of their members – patients, staff and the local community. Foundation trusts provide what the health service wants, yet are also free to invest quickly in the changes to the local community needs, in striving to be the best, and in putting their patients first. DETAILED JOB DESCRIPTION AND MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES of the Postholder : Pathway Management To be the named pathway and failsafe co-ordinator for the directorate ensuring failsafe processes are in place. To proactively manage the administration of patient pathways across speciality services and to resolve appointment queries as escalated by the appointment centre and other service areas within the Trust. Track patients and actively manage patient’s clinical pathway to ensure appointments, investigations, MDT discussions and treatments are conducted in a timely manner consistent with their timed clinical pathway and expected appointment scheduling Support service improvements in relation to the administration and delivery of patient pathways as required. On escalation, liaise with clinical teams to expedite where necessary any interventions which appear to be causing a delay or sit outside expected time scales. To track patients through speciality services, implementing processes to ensure patients are not lost to follow-up by ensuring follow-up appointments are available as necessary via the right channel (i.e. via an order). To use the 18-week referral to treatment (RTT) to manage all outpatient pathways, working in conjunction with the secretarial/administration teams and appointment centre as appropriate To oversee the co-ordination of the patient journey from referral to treatment including long term follow-up within speciality services to ensure a timely and effective delivery of patient care. Provide expert knowledge of 18-Week Referral to Treatment rules (RTT), and use them to support the secretarial and administrative teams in managing all patient journeys To assess the need to contact individual patients and coordinate completion of any outstanding appointments To track new and follow up patients within the service working in conjunction with the appointment centre Provide assurance that clinical correspondence and text reminders are uploaded, received and attended within clinically led timeframes Be responsible for identifying point of handover for patients on multiple clinical pathways and assign to appropriate administrator To demonstrate and understand speciality terminology and the flow through the patient pathways Outpatient Capacity and Management Work with Clinical and Appointment Centre Administration and booking teams to identify capacity and utilisation and ensure timely patient care is delivered. Identify, manage and monitor outpatient scheduling and potential capacity issues. Escalate any appointment capacity issues and/or appointment delays to the Operational Manager Ensure outpatient clinics are marked with consultant annual leave, audit, study leave, liaising with the Operational Manager as appropriate. Act as a point of escalation to the Operational manager, in conjunction with the consultant lead, if any concerns within clinic capacity or patient care are identified Ensure the correct booking of patient appointments, prioritising urgent patients as requested by clinicians. This includes liaising with the appointment centre, ensuring patients who do not attend are followed up appropriately at the direction of the clinician. Monitor and action incomplete outcomes making sure clinics are cashed up within a timely manner. Liaise with the appropriate clinician to action outcomes that are unavailable. Ensure failsafe loop to safeguard patients from being lost to follow-up and to avoid delays to follow-ups - make sure patients at the highest risk of significant, avoidable harm receive follow-up review and/or treatment as scheduled Monitor, escalate and amend pathway appointment bookings accordingly, monitoring against waiting targets throughout. Support the department to deliver across the range of performance indicators including ASI, holding list, RTT, incomplete outcomes, DNAs and cancellations, complaints and incidents. To maintain and be responsible for ensuring data quality on Trust systems Appointment slot issue management - working with the clinical service lead to ensure patients are allocated into the most appropriate clinics Holding list management - work with clinical leads to ensure patient is allocated into the most appropriate clinics following validation Investigate patient DNAs in conjunction with the appointment centre team, communicating the results to the consultants and the operational management team is appropriate Reschedule outpatient clinics as requested and in line with Trust policy Monitor performance indicators using the Trust Knowledge Portal working with clinicians and service leads to improve patient pathways within the service To ensure appointments are in line with the Trust Access Policy inclusive of NICE guidelines highlighting issues in taking corrective action when necessary Undertake investigation of any breaches of targets, and put in place actions to resolve and prevent Line Management Line manage the medical secretaries and administrative staff within the directorate admin team Implement Trust systems for managing individual performance and for resolving poor performance Ensure that annual leave, flexitime and sickness is managed and recorded accurately and that adequate cross cover arrangements are in place for staff in direct line management responsibility To provide day to day supervision and work allocation for all secretarial and admin staff within the directorate. Lead in the recruitment of staff with the appropriate skills to support the needs of the secretarial and admin team Be responsible for continuing personal and professional development of self and staff, undertaking yearly appraisals Monitor and manage admin staff compliance with essential safety training and any other role requirements. To train and guide all administrative staff in relation to the failsafe policies and procedures and escalate areas of concern to the Operational Manager and clinical lead as appropriate Ensure that Standard Operating Procedures are adhered to by all administrative staff within the admin team Deal with queries from GPs, doctors, wards and other service areas over the phone or in person in a calm and polite manner and in accordance with the trust policy General Responsibilities To contribute to the running of an effective and tidy administration space using appropriate administrative systems, taking initiative in establishing office procedures, managing own workload and working unsupervised Has end to end responsibility in the management and approval of all clinic template changes. Excellent communication skills with the ability to build good relationships, manage conflict and have authentic conversations within a challenging environment To communicate with all levels of staff within the Trust, Primary Care, Partnership Trusts and patients to obtain a verify relevant information relating to patient care To be competent and confident in using EPR and other systems in the department To chair and/or actively participate in all appropriate staff meetings and training initiatives To be responsible for timely written and verbal communication with patient s, clinicians, nursing staff and management Awareness of data protection act and freedom of information act and support requests for data as required Ensure that all information distributed to patient s is accurate and up-to-date To deal with complex queries/concerns and support complaint investigations as appropriate, implementing any actions agreed as a result. Liaise with the operational manager for escalation when required. To work closely with clinical, operational and governance colleagues to deal with patient queries, complaints, and/or incidents in relation to pathway management and outpatient services within the directorate. Safeguard against appointment errors incorrect bookings and location errors Escalate any issues that cannot that be directly resolved to the Operational Manager Responsibility for checking the quality of data entered onto the failsafe and filing system, to ensure that all national standards are maintained and reportable To escalate potential breaches in line with the Trust Escalation Policy, immediately to the Operational manager Support senior management team and consultants with capacity and demand modelling within the service Support service improvement pathway redesign across the directorate Manage communications targets e.g. discharge letters and outpatients letters Monitor that all communications to clinical team, primary care, patients and their relatives as well as internal and external organisation are timely and of a high standard Liaise closely with other Patient Pathway Managers in other Trust admin teams to ensure a standardised approach to management of patient pathways Act as the point of escalation for the secretarial and administration team and associated posts on issues and queries relating to the patient pathway This job description is an outline only and is not definitive or restrictive in any way. It will be regularly reviewed and may be amended in the light of changing circumstances following consultation with the post holder.