Purchasing Officer

at  Northumbria Healthcare NHCT Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

We are looking to appoint a well-motivated, outgoing, conscientious person to join our Purchasing team. The Purchasing Team consists of 5 Purchasing Officers, and 2 Senior Purchasing Officers. The successful applicant will be expected to provide a Purchasing Service across the Trust, and work as part of the team based at Cobalt Business Park.
You must have previous experience of working in a Purchasing environment. You should also be PC Literate with experience of Microsoft Packages. You should have analytical, verbal and written communication skills and a confident telephone manner.
Please note we reserve the right to close this vacancy prior to the closing date once the required number of suitable applications have been received.
The post is to be based at Cobalt Business Park, but the post holder may be required to work on other sites within the Trust.
Main duties of the job
Main purpose of the job is to provide and effective and efficient Purchasing service for medical and non-medical equipment, consumables and services in accordance with the Trust’s Standing Orders and Financial Procedures. Ensuring all orders are promptly generated and expedited as appropriate, identifying suppliers, selecting products, negotiating prices and using your own initiative to resolve delivery and quality problems.
We manage four major acute hospitals, North Tyneside General Hospital, Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, Wansbeck General Hospital and Hexham General Hospital. We also provide a service for a number of smaller community hospitals and clinics from Tynemouth to Berwick on Tweed. We care for people in their homes and provide services from facilities in local communities such as health centres. We give people greater choice and control over their care to help them to live independently at home and avoid hospital admission where appropriate. High quality patient care is at the heart of everything we do and we strive to ensure every single patient and service user has an exceptional experience with us. We have one of the most extensive patient experience programmes of any trust in England.
The Purchasing Officer has overall responsibility to provide an effective and efficient Purchasing service for Medical and Non-medical equipment, consumables, excluding Pharmacy, across Northumbria Healthcare Trust and Primary Care Trust sites. The services are in accordance with the Trust’s Standing Orders and Financial Procedures, and ensure all orders for goods and services required are appropriately sourced, generated and expedited in the agreed timescale.
The post holder will work with other members of the team to ensure orders are correctly processed to provide quality orders, correctly sourced enhancing high safe patient care. As well as working together within your team, you must also have the ability to work independently supporting the daily tasks of the team, ensuring all queries relating to orders are dealt with in a timely fashion.
Post holder will communicate on all levels building relationships with staff and colleagues throughout the Trust. Internally you will be working closely with other Procurement Team members and our Finance department. A close relationship with staff in Finance is essential to solve any problems in processing invoices arising from variances in order prices, quantity delivered.
Communication skills are required when dealing with customers enquiring over incorrect orders or late deliveries, this will require calmness and tact as customers can occasionally be angry and/or impatient.
Communications will be in person, telephone, teams, and e-mail.
We operate via an agile hybrid approach to maximise the benefits of working across both healthcare & corporate sites and from home

Please refer the Job description for details