Job overview
Manage and support the flow of patients through emergency and elective pathways providing a proactive and efficient service from admission to discharge, ensuring all patients receive safe, personal and effective care throughout their stay at ELHT.
Facilitate patient placement of emergency and elective admissions and the internal transfers and repatriations to and from hospital sites and other Trusts. Work in partnership with other member of the Clinical Site Team, Multi-disciplinary Teams and patient areas that are involved in clinical flow.
Main duties of the job
Act as a lead point of contact for the organisation in the facilitation of bed capacity and demand for emergency, urgent and elective admissions. Identifies and understands obstacles to patient flow and actively works to support removing them.
Ensure an accurate knowledge of bed availability and demand is recorded and communicated with the Clinical Site Manager timely to maintain flow and allow for an accurate situation report at flow meetings.
Escalate capacity issues or risks to the clinical site manager and take proactive steps to resolve them.
Provide leadership and support during times of increased operational pressures i.e. winter pressures, major incident, fire.
Working for our organisation
Values:
· Respecting the individual
· Putting patients and customers first
· Promoting positive change
· Acting with integrity
· Serving the community
Underpinning the Trust’s vision and values are the following key operating principles that influence the way in which the Trust does business:
· Understand the world we live in and deal with it
· We are clinically led, and management supported
· Support departments support the front line
· Everything is delivered by and through Divisions
· Compliance with standards and targets are a given. They are the things we do to help secure our independence and influence
· Quality is our organising principle – driving quality up and cost down is not mutually exclusive
· We deliver what we say we need to
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
MAIN DUTIES
Act as a lead point of contact for the organisation in the facilitation of bed capacity and demand for emergency, urgent and elective admissions. Identifies and understands obstacles to patient flow and actively works to support removing them.
Ensure an accurate knowledge of bed availability and demand is recorded and communicated with the Clinical Site Manager timely to maintain flow and allow for an accurate situation report at flow meetings.
Escalate capacity issues or risks to the clinical site manager and take proactive steps to resolve them.
Provide leadership and support during times of increased operational pressures i.e. winter pressures, major incident, fire.
Assist with data collection and analysis to maintain accurate reporting and contribute towards Trust key targets.
Support and drive the NHS 10-year plan (2025) especially actions related to patient flow.
Identifies, collects and evaluates information to support clinical decision making to maintain patient safety and timely care.
Develop good strong interpersonal skills with all levels of staff within the Trust demonstrating a good understanding and level of knowledge in patient placement.
Be a point of contact for all level of queries with regards to admission and flow within remit of knowledge and role. Escalate unresolved issues, complaints, disputes or delays in care to the Clinical Site Manager.
Understand policy and procedures related to patient flow and support adherence.
Contribute to all role and team related targets identified within the Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
Liaise with all inpatient areas, SDECs and theatres to ensure optimum bed usage, arrange patient transfers to the wards or patient transport and maintain systems to ensure that this happens in a timely fashion.
Assess priorities and organises own time and workload. In addition, exercise a high level of initiative in the adjustment of priorities and workload based on discussion and negotiation with the Clinical Site Manager and activity on and on-going basis.
Contribute to the management and escalation of patients medically optimised to reduce length of stay for patients thus improving outcomes.
Identify and add patients to the intermediate care list who require in-patient rehabilitation.
Ensure any patient transport need is booked according to standard work and patients are highlighted via EPR for discharge lounge.
Physically moves patients to wards and discharge lounge when required to maintain patient safety and improve patient experience.
Contribute suggestions for service improvement within patient flow team and support with maintaining and embedding any changes.
Awareness of the Major Incident policy and the role of the bed manager.
Treat everyone with equity and respect and ensure appropriate standards of behaviour are maintained within the team and across all wards and departments.
Responsible for ensuring appropriate patients are transferred timely when the Trust escalation protocols are activated.
Prioritise admissions based on clinical need, infection control status, and operational pressures.
Person specification
personal information
Essential criteria
* RGN
* Experience as a Band 5 within ELHT
* Familiar with EPR and Trust IT systems
Desirable criteria
* Experience within acute environment using flow systems
* Understanding of escalation and major incident policies
* Ability to work under pressure, manage fluctuating work load.
* Acute clinical knowledge
* Able to de-escalate stressful situations
* Work within a diverse team and wider MDT
* Awareness of clinical governance and patient safety systems and reports
* Knowledge of national targets and 10 year NHS plan.