General Manager - Women's Services & Neonates

at  Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

BAND 8D GENERAL MANAGER - WOMEN’S & NEONATES

Cross site - Chelsea and West Middlesex Hospitals
This post attracts an on-call allowance
Previous applicants need not apply
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an individual with an excellent track record of operational management, people leadership, and change management to join the senior leadership team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital as General Manager for Women’s and Neonates. Working alongside the Lead Nurses, Heads of Midwifery and Clinical Directors, the General Manager will be responsible for a range of services including two neonatal units, gynaecology and maternity services across hospital and community sites.
Accountable to the Divisional Director of Operations, and working in partnership with Clinical Directors, Divisional Midwife and Lead Nurses, the General Manager is responsible for operational delivery, operational performance, financial performance, governance, change and business development across the Directorate. The General Manager will provide effective leadership and is a key member of the Trust and Division’s senior management teams.
The General Manager is responsible for the delivery of financial, quality, performance, productivity and workforce targets, including national targets and objectives set as part of Trust business planning. The General Manager will be expected to oversee the financial control of a sizeable budget including pay and non-pay across the two main hospital sites.
The General Manager is accountable for establishing and maintaining internal controls within the directorate to assure delivery of financial management and the deployment of resources in line with the Trust’s Financial Plan and in accordance with the Trust’s Standing Financial Instructions, Standing Orders and capital investment procedures. The General Manager is also responsible for negotiating and managing Service Level Agreements and contracts.
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of England’s top-performing and safest trusts. We operate two main acute hospital sites—Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital—along with award-winning clinics across North West London.
Our nearly 7,500 staff care for a diverse population of 1.5 million, providing full clinical services, including maternity, A&E, and children’s services, plus specialist HIV and sexual health clinics. The Care Quality Commission rates us ‘Good’ in safety, effectiveness, care, and responsiveness, and ’Outstanding’ in leadership and resource use.
We continually invest in our facilities, including a £30m expansion of critical care at Chelsea and Westminster and an £80m Ambulatory Diagnostic Centre at West Middlesex.
We welcome applications for flexible working arrangements, accommodating requests where possible to support our staff and patient needs.
The Trust is committed to equality and welcomes applications from all, regardless of background. Adjustments can be made for disabled candidates. Early application is advised as vacancies may close once sufficient applications are received. If you haven’t heard from us within three weeks of the closing date, your application was likely unsuccessful. Employment is subject to a six-month probationary period.
1. Delivery of safe, high quality patient care
In partnership with the clinical team, the General Manager will:
Create an environment within the directorate that makes care, safety and patient satisfaction everyone’s first concern. There will be an emphasis on learning from incidents, patient feedback and risk management systems to drive continuous service improvement and the reduction of risk.
Ensure that high quality clinical services are delivered in line with the Trust’s Quality Strategy and available financial resources.
Be proactive and innovative in leading the development and implementation of the Patient Involvement strategy, ensuring there are mechanisms to seek feedback to help improve/develop services. The post-holder will listen and take action to address concerns identified through a range of tools including the annual patient survey, real time patient feedback systems, PALs and formal complaints, providing regular feedback to patients, parents and staff on action taken with training and support for staff where appropriate.
Ensure patient environments are supportive of providing high quality patient care and lead in reducing anxiety.
2. Governance
In partnership with the clinical team, the General Manager will:
Actively involve and lead directorate staff in the delivery of Clinical Governance, in accordance with Trust systems, processes and priorities. General Managers are expected to participate and lead service reviews (where appropriate) to ensure that care is delivered in line with best practice and actions are taken to ensure any system failures are addressed. The General Manager, Divisional Nurse/Midwife and Clinical Directors will work together to organise Directorate clinical governance half days and governance policy boards to ensure the monitoring of trends, dissemination of best practice and learning throughout the Directorate.
Establish, maintain and oversee a system of internal control within the directorate that supports an integrated approach to governance. This will include responsibility for mitigating risks identified in the Assurance Framework, the Risk Register, the Incident Review Register, the annual directorate comprehensive risk assessment and any ad-hoc risk assessments. It will also include ensuring a comprehensive and robust mechanism across the Directorate for reporting on and learning from incidents and complaints that promotes a culture of openness and honesty.
Ensure that directorate responsibilities with respect to external assessments e.g. Risk Management and the Care Quality Commission’s Standards are fulfilled.
The General Manager will support, in partnership with Divisional Nurse/Midwife, Clinical Directors to provide strong clinical leadership to facilitate a robust clinical and research governance culture within the directorate and at a corporate level. This will include the implementation and monitoring of national initiatives, such as NICE guidance and the implementation of the Trust’s framework for clinical and non-clinical risk management, untoward incident management and Serious Alert Broadcasts.
Together with the Divisional Nurse/Midwife and Clinical Directors, lead the management of complaints and learning from complaints and incidents. The post-holder will ensure that appropriate action is taken to address issues of concern and prevent recurrence of similar events. The post- holder will be required to communicate sensitive and often contentious information to patients, families and staff, including chairing Local Resolution Meetings.
Ensure that all incident reviews led by the directorate are undertaken in a timely manner, resultant action plans completed to an agreed timetable with feedback regarding the progress made to the Clinical Governance Trust Executive and staff directly involved.
3. Operational planning and delivery

Please refer the Job description for details