Costing Practitioner

Supporting the Senior Costing Practitioner in the development and production of Service Line Reporting and Patient Level Costing Information, engagement of clinicians and operational staff in understanding and utilising this information to support Trust’s strategies and to identify clinical and financial variation.

Responsible for the production of Costing Returns required by NHS England and the Department of Health / Health Education England utilising the Trust’s automated costing solution.

Working with the Information / Data Warehouse Team to develop existing automated costing solutions and data warehouse activity feeder processes to comply with NHS England’s mandated Costing Standards and to continually improve and refine the Trust’s Costing and Service Line Reporting Solutions.

The post holder will be required to liaise with clinicians, general managers, operational staff and other finance and non-finance staff to understand the complexities of the Trust’s activities and the relationship to patient and financial data.

The post holder will be required to convey financial concepts clearly and persuasively to clinicians and non-finance managers of all levels from frontline staff to Board members. In particular, the post holder will have a close relationship with the Income & Contracts and Information teams.

The postholder will work towards the engagement of clinicians, operational and managerial staff in understanding and utilising costing and service line reporting information to support the Trust’s strategies and to identify clinical and financial variation. The postholder will be confident in delivering sometimes controversial messages and being challenged on highly complex information.

Relationships

Internal
- Corporate Financial Information Team
- Income & Contracts Team
- Head of Information Services
- Data Warehouse Team
- General Managers
- Other Senior Managers
- Clinicians
- Internal Audit
- HR Department
- IT Department
- Other Finance Department Staff
- Information Governance Department

External
- Department of Health/ NHS England/ Clinical Commissioning Groups and other NHS /Government organisations
- Peers at other NHS Providers
- Private Providers
- Voluntary Organisations
- External Audit
- External Consultants
- System Suppliers

This is an opportunity to join a dynamic, experienced finance team, with huge scope for both personal professional development and to improve healthcare provision for the local population.

Main duties and Responsibilities

Service Line Reporting and Service Reviews
- End to end management of the trusts primary financial business intelligence tool.
- Responsible for devising, developing, managing, and effectively implementing highly complex costing information systems and solutions, using knowledge of costing principles and techniques, including visualization, that supports easy comprehension of the information.
- Critically review significant changes in service costs and activity within the Trust between comparative periods.
- Produce benchmarking data, comparing the Trusts costs and activities against those published by other organisations and share those with relevant stakeholders driving positive actions to reduce costs and/or increase productivity.
- Working with the Information / Data Warehouse Team to develop existing automated costing solutions and data warehouse activity feeder processes.
- Frequently review highly complex information and make judgements about relationships between data from different sources
- Train operational, clinical and finance staff in the use of Service Line Reporting tool. This may be through a variety of methods, such as drop-in sessions, formal presentations, one-to-one meetings.

National Costing Return
- Progress the development of the Costing System within the Trust to meet the external costing requirements detailed in the NHS Costing Manual.
- Keep up to date with any new legislation or requirements issued by the Department of Health, National Costing Team, and any other Best Practice on Costing.
- Produce detailed audit trails and reconciliations for the costed financial and activity values at various control levels in line with costing guidance and audit requirements.

Other
- Carry out ad hoc costings as required to support the Trust’s strategies, business cases and developments.
- Plan and work independently to meet national and internal deadlines, sometimes spanning several months.
- Create and maintain complex Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Script and run simple select queries using Microsoft SQL.
- Ensure that own professional skills and knowledge are regularly updated.
- Work on and/or manage various projects as assigned by the Senior Costing Practitioner.
- Work with display screen equipment and keyboard for prolonged periods.
- Participate in appraisals and personal reviews and work to achieve agreed set objectives.
- Participate in appropriate training and development activities
- Participate