Patient Services Manager

JOB TITLE:                              PATIENT SERVICES MANAGER

REPORTS TO:                         PRACTICE MANAGER

HOURS:                                  37.5 hours per week

Job summary:

Provide leadership to Patient Services team to ensure service excellence; direct via patient engagement and indirect via first-rate support to clinicians.  Provide effective management and administrative support to the practice manager/assistant practice manager, including change management and organisational change projects.  Manage easy-to-maintain processes and systems that are both robust and resilient. 

Job responsibilities:

Partnership

• Provide first line management support to the clinical teams.
• Overview and monitor rotas, availability, allocations, changes.
• Organise and monitor duty rotas, co-ordinate leave requests.
• Co-ordinate GP and nursing team availability.
• Update appointments system for leave/duty changes, locums

Patient Services

• Proactively engage with patients to ensure excellence in service delivery at all times.
• Deal with complaints in accordance with practice complaints procedure and evaluate suggestions.
• Deal with requests to change doctor
• Monitor EMIS clinical system to ensure optimum utilisation of appointments.
• Ensure adequate staffing for Patient Services rota
• Organise clinics/coordinate staffing
• Co-ordinate volunteer services and Patient Participation Group activities

Employed staff

• Provide strong leadership in all respects
• Provide induction training and ongoing review/performance appraisals
• Provide continuous mentoring, coaching and role modelling to continually raise service standards and maximise staff motivation/retention.
• Constantly improve the organisation, processes and systems to improve productivity, reduce workplace stress and continuously enhance service delivery
• Ensure practice policies are followed and accurate records are kept, with particular reference to: appointments, messages, visits, post, patient registration, repeat prescriptions, filing systems
• Overview staff rotas to optimise staff cover to workload, by utilising regular audits of demand/capacity as well as through a strongly intuitive feel for the demand dynamic
• Liaise with management team concerning staffing and organisation of work
• Liaise with other members of the primary health care team, outside agencies and practice volunteers as required
• Fire protocols/checks/drills
• Health & Safety protocols/checks/drills
• Ensure staff adhere to infection control standards
• Provide references for previous employees

Administration

• Attend staff meetings
• Ensure all aspects of staff administration are optimally organised and improved upon
• Support the management team with projects and ongoing tasks

Information technology

• Have full understanding of EMIS and practice IT systems
• Have a working knowledge of all software and hardware
• Maintain Jayex patient information system for effective patient communication
• Deal with IT problems. Train staff to be competent with first level IT support.
• Train staff in use of systems and processes, and quality control/audits

Premises

• Have a clear understanding of telephone systems, daytime and out of hours
• First level support for out of hours call outs when required
• Coordinate maintenance contractors as required e.g. plumbing and cleaning
• Assist with remodelling and room moves as required
• Understand and check security systems – alarms & cameras
• Support the management team with frequent premises checks/remedial action

Information

• Ensure communication systems are running smoothly, and doctors and reception staff are kept fully informed of changes in procedures and current developments
• Assist with production and upkeep of practice procedures and protocols. Ensure staff fully aware and compliant with all.
• Manage IT flows and paperwork systems, including post, internal and external
• Act as the central source of information for operational matters

  Other Tasks

• Health and safety
• Infection Control compliance
• Co-ordinate voluntary agencies
• Arrange gifts and cards for staff leaving, marriages, births
• Deputise for assistant practice manager in their absence

Confidentiality

• In the course of seeking treatment, patients entrust us with, or allow us to gather, sensitive information in relation to their health and other matters.  They do so in confidence and have the right to expect that staff will respect their privacy and act appropriately.
• In the performance of the duties outlined in this job description, the post-holder may have access to confidential information relating to patients and their carers, practice staff and other healthcare workers.  They may also have access to information relating to the practice as a business organisation.  All such information from any source is to be regarded as strictly confidential, subject to the practice disciplinary code.
• Information relating to patients, carers, colleagues, other healthcare workers or the business of the practice may only be divulged to authorised persons in accordance with the practice policies and procedures relating to confidentiality and the protection of personal and sensitive data.

Health & safety:

The post-holder will implement and lead on the full range of promotion and management of their own and others’ health, safety and security as defined in the practice health & safety policy,

the practice infection control policy and published procedures. This will include (but will not be limited to):

• Ensuring Patient Services staff adhere to their individual responsibilities for infection control and health and safety, using a system of observation, audit and check, hazard identification, questioning, reporting and risk management.
• Maintaining an up-to-date knowledge of health and safety and infection control (statutory and best practice guidelines) and ensure implementation across the business
• Using personal security systems within the workplace, according to practice guidelines
• Identifying the risks involved in work activities and undertaking such activities in a way that manages those risks across the business
• Making effective use of training to update knowledge and skills, and initiate and manage the training of others
• Using appropriate infection control procedures, maintaining work areas in a tidy and safe way and free from hazards, and initiating remedial / corrective action where needed
• Actively identifying, reporting, and correcting health and safety hazards and infection hazards immediately when recognised
• Keeping own work areas and general / patient areas generally clean, identifying issues and hazards / risks in relation to other work areas within the business, and assuming responsibility in the maintenance of general standards of cleanliness across the business in consultation (where appropriate) with other sector managers
• Undertaking periodic infection control training (minimum annually)
• Routine management of own team / team areas, and maintenance of work space standards
• Demonstrate due regard for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults

Equality and Diversity:

The post-holder will support the equality, diversity and rights of patients, carers and colleagues, to include:

• Acting in a way that recognises the importance of people’s rights, interpreting them in a way that is consistent with practice procedures and policies, and current legislation
• Respecting the privacy, dignity, needs and beliefs of patients, carers and colleagues
• Behaving in a manner that is welcoming to and of the individual, is non-judgmental and respects their circumstances, feelings priorities and rights.

Personal/professional development:

The post-holder will participate in any training programme implemented by the practice as part of this employment, such training to include:

• Participation in an annual individual performance review, including taking responsibility for maintaining a record of own personal and/or professional development
• Taking responsibility for own development, learning and performance and demonstrating skills and activities to others who are undertaking similar work

Quality:

The post-holder will strive to maintain quality within the practice, and will:

• Alert other team members to issues of quality, performance and risk
• Assess own performance and take accountability for own actions, either directly or under supervision
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the team by reflecting on own and team activities and making suggestions on ways to improve and enhance the team’s performance, through a continuous improvement and total quality management approach
• Work effectively with individuals in other agencies to meet patients’ needs
• Effectively manage own time, workload and resources

Communication:

The post-holder should recognize the importance of effective communication within the team and will strive to:

• Communicate effectively with other team members
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers
• Recognise people’s needs for alternative methods of communication and respond accordingly

Contribution to the implementation of services:

The post-holder will:

• Apply practice policies, standards and guidance
• Discuss with other team members how policies, standards and guidelines will affect own work
• Participate in audits where appropriate

Change Management

Primary care is experiencing unprecedented demands and change.  The post-holder will proactively engage with all structural and cultural impacts of managing the changes that occur to ensure the practice’s operation is leading-edge, robust and resilient at all times.