Quality Assurance Advisor inLondon inLondon PUBLISHED 20 DEC 2023

The QA Advisors key responsibility is to deliver a screening quality assurance programme and support the development of policy, methods and tools for quality assurance. The post holder should provide specialist advice related to a defined portfolio of NHS screening programmes whilst building and managing relationships with local, and national stakeholders. The post holder will work within a specialist team, led by a Senior QA Advisor with responsibility to:

• create and develop reports, spreadsheets and databases for the presentation of results and surveys to key stakeholders;
• participate in relevant Programme Centre meetings national working groups as required;
• contribute to the development and implementation of the organisational plan to ensure regular and formal quality assurance of NHS screening programmes. Undertake service review/audit using national tools; make recommendations for service improvements and reporting outcomes from QA processes. Monitor progress of visits;
• manage communications with the organisations and professionals involved in review process;
• manage the implementation of the QA cycle from self-assessment and pre-visit/intervention preparation, including the management of any visit/intervention programme;
• review and analyse self-assessment and key evidence submissions to develop consistent and appropriate briefs for sessional experts / professional and clinical advisors and any visiting review teams;
• support the Senior QA Advisor in ensuring that where full QA visits are undertaken, review teams provide accurate, appropriate feedback to commissioners, provider executive and programme teams on the findings of the review visit; highlighting any issues / concerns raised during the visit;
• implement a consistent approach to the QA process across in a defined place, in association with peers, replicate this across England;
• support the development and lead implementation of national guidance and toolkits/templates throughout your region or other regions;
• obtain and provide feedback on policies, procedures and QA tools for regional/national QA and programme leads;
• analyse complex data from local screening programmes including KPIs and annual report returns;
• act as the key resource for provision of information regarding NHS screening programmes;
• use specialist knowledge and expertise to advise local programmes and commissioners on the quality of the screening programmes and provide guidance on how to deliver high quality programmes;
• participate in incident investigation meetings when required, providing progress reports to the Senior QA Advisor, the senior clinical lead (CPH) and the national portfolio team; and
• ensure that areas of underperformance and adverse QA reports are investigated and addressed, escalating referrals to appropriate authoritative bodies if required. Oversee implementation of action plans and routinely monitor progress.

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The Vaccination and Screening Directorate is responsible for discharging the NHS public health functions agreement, under which the Secretary of State delegates responsibility to NHS England for certain public health services (Section 7A services), including around 20 immunisation programmes, 11 screening programmes and other services such as child health information services (CHIS), some of which are led by Health and Justice national commissioning team.

Working as a multi-disciplinary team, we work across the NHS and wider partners to design/deliver the best possible services. The directorate is collectively responsible for the delivery of our mission statement:

• To deliver maximum levels of uptake and coverage across the whole population within and between communities, improving health outcomes, avoiding harm, enabling earlier diagnosis and helping people to stay well, leaving no-one behind.

The post holder will work within the bowel cancer screening portfolio team with responsibility for a small number of providers and supported by a senior QA Advisor working within a geographical area, providing input and support to the national portfolio deliverables. They will be required to work with a degree of autonomy in support of the senior QA Advisors in the delivery of a comprehensive programme of QA capable of maintaining and further developing effective high quality screening. Some cross cover between geographically based QA teams will be expected to ensure resilience.

The post holder will:

• work with QA Facilitators managing complex QA issues and acting as a point of escalation to support the Senior QA Advisor to ensure their work stream of programmes are planned and managed effectively
• be expected to develop close liaison and communication with local screening programmes, provider organisations and commissioners to monitor organisations against minimum standards of service performance/quality across all elements of the NHS bowel cancer screening programme
• work collaboratively with colleagues responsible for the screening QA and improvement of other screening programmes and work nationally to promote consistency across national screening programmes in the delivery of the national QA and improvement function.

Whilst the postholder may have a usual group of providers and commissioners that they work with they will be expected to have flexibility to work with other screening providers/commissioners across the country to focus screening QA and improvement activity with prioritised providers.

The post holder must be able to operate independently with the capability to interpret, implement and provide specialist advice but recognise when to refer matters of particular complexity/sensitivity to the more senior staff.

In line with the programme specific operating model, supporting delivery of QA interventions, by supporting QA visits and leading screening pathway reviews with responsibility for report or letter content and recommendations.