Senior Service Improvement Manager | Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Senior Service Improvement Manager to join our team on a 24 Month Fixed Term basis. The post holder will support several projects across the Divisions within the Trust, providing leadership and guidance to specific service improvement and redesign projects and programmes of work, designed to support delivery of the Trust's 5 Star Patient Care Strategy. They will be responsible for planning, facilitating and delivering specific projects, using appropriate tools and techniques which facilitate optimum operational performance and quality improvement. They will utilise appropriate methodology to focus change and improvement initiatives on meeting a range of improvement outcomes; improved clinical outcomes, enhanced patient experience, patient safety, and service efficiency. The post holder will be expected to act autonomously ensuring that daily tasks and on-going workloads are prioritised and completed in agreed timeframes. They must have excellent interpersonal skills and be able to hold project leads to account. The post holder will handle and manage highly complex and sensitive information about staff, work processes, commercial plans, strategic objectives and barriers to change. They will have a responsibility to line manage the Service Improvement Manager and/or Specialist Information Analysts. The Senior Service Improvement Manager will report directly to the Head of Service Improvement/PMO and will work closely with cross-functional project teams and other staff within the trust on service improvement and project delivery. The post holder will be expected to lead on several existing and new service redesign initiatives supporting operational staff through the process from scoping, process mapping to implementation, whilst at the same time building and maintaining effective governance around the projects and wider programme. Drawing on a wide range of national and local performance data supported by a deep understanding of the processes within a service or team, the post holder will ensure the delivery of a range of quality and efficiency outcomes., Communication

• The post holder will produce highly complex sensitive and contentious information for a diverse range of clinical and non-clinical staff both internal and external to the Trust, about operational processes both clinical and non-clinical. Presenting the current state of the process initially through information and data gathered during observation, and through the interpretation of performance data through the life of a project.
• The post holder will discuss and present through different media highly complex, sensitive, and contentious information to individuals and groups of staff at all stages of a service improvement project combining data gathered from workplace observation and from the various Trust information systems with the aim of securing the cooperation and buy in of staff to the service improvement project or programme.
Knowledge Training and Experience
• Using their highly developed specialist knowledge of Service Improvement methodologies (eg, lean, model for improvement) the post holder will be required to mentor and support staff either individually or collectively through the life of a project, teaching staff tools, techniques, and approaches and, through their own extensive practical experience work with staff to ensure that theory is reflected in new ways of working.
• Using their highly developed specialist knowledge and extensive experience of change management, the post holder will lead and support in the implementation of operational process changes.
Analytical and Judgement Skills
• The post holder will be required to collect, analyse, and interpret complex multi-faceted qualitative and quantitative process data and on this basis set out strong recommendations to resolve operational performance difficulties and problems.
• The post holder will be required to make judgments about when to escalate problems that hinder projects achieving their planned result. These judgements will be made based on highly developed specialist knowledge of project management and the application of Service Improvement methodologies (eg, Lean, model for improvement) balancing the risk of dis-engagement with the need to keep the project on track.
Planning & Organisational
• Contributes to and assists the Service Improvement & System Optimisation Manager in the development of a complex strategic forward programme of work for the Service Improvement team which will initially require approval by the Service Improvement Council and then require sensitive adjustment through the year to respond to changes arising post data analysis.
• Managing individual projects, coordinating the input of a wide range of stakeholders from across the organisation at various times and for different reasons, whose primary goal is to achieve improved operational performance and quality.
Physical Skills
• The post holder will be required to transport stationery and IT equipment required for presentation of data from multiple sources and in different media to different stakeholders both within and outside the Trust.
• The post holder will be required to drive to different sites of the Trusts estate.
• The post holder may be required to stand and walk for long periods of time when undertaking process observations in the workplace at the point of front-line service delivery.
• The post holder will be required to work in several clinical and non-clinical areas alongside front line staff in the delivery of their duties and close to patients in the care setting.
Responsibility for Patient/Client Care
• The post holder will be required to engage in communication with patients when undertaking process observations seeking their views about their experience in the process.
• The post holder will be required to raise concerns they have about patient safety and experience that they may have observed in the process of gathering data about patient care processes.
Responsibility for Policy/Service Development
• The post holder will propose and support implementation of a wide range of changes to service delivery across the Trust both at service and department/directorate level through each of the projects they are dedicated to.
• The post holder will propose and implement a wide range of changes across pathways which will require them to work across traditional multidisciplinary boundaries and bring individual services, individual staff and groups of staff together around the main goal/target/aim of the individual or group of projects.
• The post holder will be required to contribute to and support the Service Improvement & System Optimisation Manager in the on-going development of the Service Improvement team's function and purpose.
Responsibility for Financial & Physical Resource
• The post holder will be responsible for ensuring that individual projects within the programme have included financial plans either for expenditure required through the life of the project and in support of successful outcomes of the project, and/or that appropriate projects can demonstrate in clear terms their impact/contribution on cost improvement or cost reduction. The post holder will be required to provide direction to operational managers and clinical leaders on the development of cost improvement initiatives drawing up and monitoring CIP plans.
Responsibility for Human Resources
• The post holder will be responsible for the line management of the other members of the Service Improvement team. This will include managing the appraisal process, disciplinary matters, ensuring that each team member has got an active Personal Development Plan and training is organised accordingly, and managing all forms of extraction (annual leave, sick leave, study leave etc)
• The post holder will supervise the work of the Specialist Information Analysts in agreed areas of their work drawing on their own significant experience to guide and support them.
Responsibility for Information Resources
• The post holder, drawing on their significant experience and knowledge will be required from time to time, and as determined by the project outcomes, to input into the design of systems that relay information as to the status of a process or operational performance.
Responsibility for Research and Development
• The post holder will be required to regularly undertake assessments of services and processes with a wide expansive scope.
• The post holder will be required to use data gathered as a trigger to undertaking more detailed analysis of processes and systems such that the findings provide evidence to leverage change and redesign.
• The post holder will be required to research from a variety of sources numerous subjects including new practice, national policy, academic research etc. and then use this data to inform project outcomes and to enhance the methods and approaches to change and process improvement used by the team.
  
  Disability Confident
About Disability Confident A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident.

Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust serves a population of over 600,000 with a workforce of over 9000 dedicated and skilled staff across 21 sites. We strongly believe that the communities we serve should all have access to Five Star Patient Care. Our services: Acute Care Providing emergency and maternity services at Whiston, Southport and Ormskirk hospitals, and medical and surgical specialties across all our sites. Primary Care Providing primary care services at Marshalls Cross Medical Centre situated in St Helens Hospital. Community Services Providing adult community services for St Helens and a wheelchair service in Chorley, South Ribble, and West Lancashire. Our inpatient unit at Newton Community Hospital is where patients needing acute hospital beds can continue rehabilitation, freeing up space for more unwell patients. We also provide urgent care at our Urgent Treatment Centre located in St Helens town centre. Specialist Regional Services We provide the Mersey Regional Burns & Plastic Surgery Unit at Whiston Hospital and the Spinal Injuries Unit at Southport Hospital to more than 4 million people across the whole of Merseyside, West Lancashire, Cheshire, Isle of Man and North Wales. Achievements:
• Rated Outstanding by CQC Inspection August 2018
• Top 100 places to work in the NHS (NHS Employers & Health Service Journal)
• National Preceptorship Accreditation (2023) for Nursing & AHP Preceptorship Programme