Admissions Scheduler

The post holder will be accountable to the Surgery Service Managers. They will provide an efficient admission service for all adult patients within the Division and lead on developments in the way elective admissions are organised. They should be able to identify any shortfall in the provision of elective slots and put forward suggestions for improving the patient access system and ensure that elective surgery access targets within the Division of Theatres and Surgery are met. The post holder will be booking the elective patients within the National 18 week target and Cancer targets.

Band 3 Scheduler - Surgical Admissions Team

We are looking for a new members of staff to join our existing Admissions teams at University Hospital Lewisham and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich.

You will work as part of this team to ensure that patients are admitted to hospital in a timely and efficient manner, making the process as smooth as possible for patients and clinicians.
This is an exciting time to join a growing department. The role of the Scheduler requires you to cover all specialties and to provide support to other areas during times of annual leave or other absences. Duties will include contacting patients to arrange admission for surgery, booking patients into the hospital database, checking confidential information, liaising with patients medical staff, nursing and Theatre Staff face to face and over the phone, data entry and hospital notes management.

This is a challenging role and if you think that you are the right person we would like to hear from you.

**For further details / informal visits contact**:
Mandy Wright, Deputy Service Manager for Admissions on

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust is a community focused provider of local and acute care, providing high quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley. With a turnover of around £700 million, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham and a range of community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.

As an organisation, we’ve made significant improvements for patients and staff in the last two and-a-half years. This is reflected in our most recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection (from February 2020), which found improvements across the organisation and gave us an improved rating of “Good” in the Well-Led and Effective domains, in addition to the rating of “Good” that we had already achieved in the Caring domain. Our staff culture change programme has been key to the Trust’s improvement journey, as we’ve stabilised our workforce by reducing vacancy rates and improving staff retention. We’ve also significantly increased the representation of minority ethnic leaders across our clinical and corporate teams.
- Co-ordinating and responsibility for patients on the waiting list for elective surgery within their designated specialty.
- Providing a primary point of contact between the multi-disciplinary team and their colleagues, patients and relatives.
- Schedule elective admission, contacting patient offering them admission dates and agree with them the date of admission.
- To use the 18 week Referral to Treatment guidance to manage the elective patient journey and develop expert knowledge of RTT.
- To liaise with clinicians to ensure effective organisation and scheduling of theatre lists.
- To attend weekly PTL meetings with Service Manager ensuring theatre lists are booked to maximum capacity. This will involve proactively looking to fill late cancellations in order to maximise capacity and activity.
- To assist the Admissions Supervisor in monitoring and recording Surgeon annual leave and arranging cover where appropriate, ensuring relevant escalation to Service Manager in line with local leave booking policy where appropriate.
- Maintain a good understanding of the Trusts Access Policy and ensure that booking processes remain in line with the policy.
- To be responsible for anticipating potential breaches and escalating in good time to the Service Manager. This involves working with the Service Manager/Assistant Service Manager proactively to seek solutions to anticipate and avoid breaches.
- Be proactive in escalating where capacity limitations threaten target compliance and contribute to seeking ways to increase capacity.
- To undertake regular validation of waiting list.
- Make appointments for patients pre-assessment for surgery, in-line with the particular patients’ needs, or as directed by medical/clinical staff guidance.
- Prepare patient medical notes for review at pre-assessment as required. Including liaising with other trusts, if necessary, to order medical notes/clinical images and scans and have them available for the patients’ appointment/admission.
- Liaise with theatre to ensure that specialist equipment is available where needed, and that theatre s