General Manager - Women's Services & Neonates

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an individual with an excellent track record of operational management, people leadership, and change management to join the senior leadership team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital as General Manager for Women's and Neonates. Working alongside the Lead Nurses, Heads of Midwifery and Clinical Directors, the General Manager will be responsible for a range of services including two neonatal units, gynaecology and maternity services across hospital and community sites., Accountable to the Divisional Director of Operations, and working in partnership with Clinical Directors, Divisional Midwife and Lead Nurses, the General Manager is responsible for operational delivery, operational performance, financial performance, governance, change and business development across the Directorate. The General Manager will provide effective leadership and is a key member of the Trust and Division's senior management teams.
The General Manager is responsible for the delivery of financial, quality, performance, productivity and workforce targets, including national targets and objectives set as part of Trust business planning. The General Manager will be expected to oversee the financial control of a sizeable budget including pay and non-pay across the two main hospital sites.
The General Manager is accountable for establishing and maintaining internal controls within the directorate to assure delivery of financial management and the deployment of resources in line with the Trust's Financial Plan and in accordance with the Trust's Standing Financial Instructions, Standing Orders and capital investment procedures. The General Manager is also responsible for negotiating and managing Service Level Agreements and contracts., In partnership with the clinical team, the General Manager will:
+ Create an environment within the directorate that makes care, safety and patient satisfaction everyone's first concern. There will be an emphasis on learning from incidents, patient feedback and risk management systems to drive continuous service improvement and the reduction of risk.
+ Ensure that high quality clinical services are delivered in line with the Trust's Quality Strategy and available financial resources.
+ Be proactive and innovative in leading the development and implementation of the Patient Involvement strategy, ensuring there are mechanisms to seek feedback to help improve/develop services. The post-holder will listen and take action to address concerns identified through a range of tools including the annual patient survey, real time patient feedback systems, PALs and formal complaints, providing regular feedback to patients, parents and staff on action taken with training and support for staff where appropriate.
+ Ensure patient environments are supportive of providing high quality patient care and lead in reducing anxiety.
2. Governance
In partnership with the clinical team, the General Manager will:
+ Actively involve and lead directorate staff in the delivery of Clinical Governance, in accordance with Trust systems, processes and priorities. General Managers are expected to participate and lead service reviews (where appropriate) to ensure that care is delivered in line with best practice and actions are taken to ensure any system failures are addressed. The General Manager, Divisional Nurse/Midwife and Clinical Directors will work together to organise Directorate clinical governance half days and governance policy boards to ensure the monitoring of trends, dissemination of best practice and learning throughout the Directorate.
+ Establish, maintain and oversee a system of internal control within the directorate that supports an integrated approach to governance. This will include responsibility for mitigating risks identified in the Assurance Framework, the Risk Register, the Incident Review Register, the annual directorate comprehensive risk assessment and any ad-hoc risk assessments. It will also include ensuring a comprehensive and robust mechanism across the Directorate for reporting on and learning from incidents and complaints that promotes a culture of openness and honesty.
+ Ensure that directorate responsibilities with respect to external assessments e.g. Risk Management and the Care Quality Commission's Standards are fulfilled.
+ The General Manager will support, in partnership with Divisional Nurse/Midwife, Clinical Directors to provide strong clinical leadership to facilitate a robust clinical and research governance culture within the directorate and at a corporate level. This will include the implementation and monitoring of national initiatives, such as NICE guidance and the implementation of the Trust's framework for clinical and non-clinical risk management, untoward incident management and Serious Alert Broadcasts.
+ Together with the Divisional Nurse/Midwife and Clinical Directors, lead the management of complaints and learning from complaints and incidents. The post-holder will ensure that appropriate action is taken to address issues of concern and prevent recurrence of similar events. The post- holder will be required to communicate sensitive and often contentious information to patients, families and staff, including chairing Local Resolution Meetings.
+ Ensure that all incident reviews led by the directorate are undertaken in a timely manner, resultant action plans completed to an agreed timetable with feedback regarding the progress made to the Clinical Governance Trust Executive and staff directly involved.
3. Operational planning and delivery
The General Manager will:
+ Be responsible for the operational delivery of all services within their portfolio. These services may be across multiple sites within the Trust, and may also be across sites that are external to the Trust.
+ Work closely with internal teams to devise systems proactively to manage service demands and ensure that these are fully implemented.
+ Assist the Clinical Directors in chairing Directorate meetings and chair other relevant meetings.
+ Initiate and oversee regular reviews of services, and ensure new developments are appropriately resourced through the business planning process.
+ Monitor activity in relation to agreed activity plans and national access targets, and implement immediate corrective action in relation to any significant underperformance/ over performance.
+ Respond at a senior level and in a timely fashion to frequent and unpredictable day-to-day operational issues as required. Liaise directly with patients and staff to resolve urgent concerns, including resolving stressful or distressing situations.
4. Performance management
The General Manager will:
+ Oversee clinical services are delivered in line with required activity and income plans, maintaining control of expenditure, improving value for money and ensuring continued service development in relation to efficiency and quality. This will include implementation and monitoring of demand management initiatives agreed with commissioners.
+ Be responsible for leading the development of the performance management framework and ensuring its implementation in order to deliver national and local performance targets within the directorate
+ Developing and supporting service redesign and quality initiatives.
+ Supporting corporate performance in relation to national and local targets in collaboration with colleagues across the Trust, advising and supporting the implementation of national standards for which responsibility does not lie solely within the Directorate.
+ Taking appropriate action where the Directorate is not achieving its targets
+ Take the lead with nominated clinicians for specific targets as appropriate and agreed with the Divisional Director, and being ultimately responsible for the delivery of Directorate-specific targets. Ensuring GIRFT standards of performance are delivered or improved.
+ Be responsible for coordinating all service reviews and peer reviews relevant to services within the portfolio, both internal and external to the Trust, and be responsible for preparing and collating information and ensuring any identified actions are fully implemented. Take the lead in implementing service reviews where there are performance concerns or operational delivery challenges.
+ Oversee that the Trust processes in relation contractual requirements e.g. demand management are fully adhered to.
+ Oversee the monitoring of benchmarked performance against internal and external indicators including, but not exclusive to:
o Corporate plan targets
o Audit Commission/national performance review data o Benchmarked data sets - GIRFT etc
o External and internal service reviews
+ Advise the Trust on the appropriate clinical and activity information required effectively to manage performance within the Directorate

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of England's top-performing and safest trusts. We operate two main acute hospital sites-Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital-along with award-winning clinics across North West London.
Our nearly 7,500 staff care for a diverse population of 1.5 million, providing full clinical services, including maternity, A&E, and children's services, plus specialist HIV and sexual health clinics. The Care Quality Commission rates us 'Good' in safety, effectiveness, care, and responsiveness, and 'Outstanding' in leadership and resource use.
We continually invest in our facilities, including a £30m expansion of critical care at Chelsea and Westminster and an £80m Ambulatory Diagnostic Centre at West Middlesex.
We welcome applications for flexible working arrangements, accommodating requests where possible to support our staff and patient needs.
The Trust is committed to equality and welcomes applications from all, regardless of background. Adjustments can be made for disabled candidates. Early application is advised as vacancies may close once sufficient applications are received. If you haven't heard from us within three weeks of the closing date, your application was likely unsuccessful. Employment is subject to a six-month probationary period.

+ Please check your emails regularly as this is how we will communicate with you throughout the recruitment process.
+ If you have not heard from us within 3 weeks after the closing date, we regret that this usually means your application was not successful.
+ In submitting an application, you authorise the Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process, should you be appointed to the post.
+ During the recruitment process your identity documentation (ie passport, driving licence, visa etc) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, infrared and machine-readable zone security features of the documents provided.
+ Employment at the Trust is offered subject to successful completion of a six month probationary period.