Spotlight on the Trust’s Directorate Support Managers – #MyBTH

The Trust’s Directorate Support Managers

As part of our #MyBTH campaign, we are highlighting individuals, teams or services that have an important role within the Trust.

Here we look at the Scheduled Care Directorate Support managers…

The role of the Scheduled Care Directorate Support managers (DSM) is to support the clinical and administrative teams to deliver real time benefits in patient care. Their role delivers a positive and cumulative effect on key performance standards and provides a focus on priorities for patient care including cancer, elective and non-elective pathways.

The Scheduled Care Division is made up of three directorates:

  • Cardiac/Cardiology/ Cardiothoracic
  • General Surgery/Urology/ENT/Maxillofacial/Anaesthetics/Plastic Surgery
  • Orthopaedics/Ophthalmology/Pain Management

The team strive to minimise delays in patient care; through effective and collaborative leadership.

The Directorate Support Managers oversee the entire patient journey from appointment booking, outpatient, diagnostics, waiting list management, theatres and follow up. The DSMs work to provide the best care possible by ensuring that patients are seen quickly and are moved through their care journey in a timely manner. They keep this on track by reviewing processes and patient pathways and generating innovative ideas for service improvement.

This may include monitoring a daily patient list and tracking changes in their care which may give an opportunity for another patient to be admitted. For example, Assistant Directorate Manager, Lisa Richmond, has come up with a great initiative to increase efficiency for when patients are unable to proceed with surgery on the day as they may have a cold or may not turn up for their slot.

The DSMs have developed a system which identified patients that are happy to join a ‘stand by’ list. The ‘stand by’ list identifies patients who are willing to come in at very short notice to have a surgery which expedites patient care, maintains theatre efficiency, reduces waiting times and keeps patients moving through the system.

Tom Rushworth, Directorate Support Manager, said “Working as a DSM in Scheduled Care is very rewarding, not only personally for me but also for the patients. To positively impact on the care that our patients receive without direct clinical contact is great.

“Having the opportunity to ensure that patients are being seen in a timely manner whilst managing the everyday operational constraints that we are up against gives us a sense of achievement whilst providing us with a job that is very varied and interesting.”

 

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