Outpatient Booking Officer inFrimley inFrimley PUBLISHED 22 JUL 2024

Job Overview


The post holder will be responsible for booking outpatient appointments over the Trust sites. They will have an active role in the implementation, as well as ongoing monitoring of both new and existing appointments systems.

The post holder will assist with meeting Trust targets. The post holder will be required to offer very high customer service skills for patients and both internal and external staff.


Previous applicants need not apply


Main duties of the job


The Main Duties Of The Role Will Be

• Arranging appointments over the telephone with patients
• Booking patient appointments from waiting lists
• Rescheduling and cancelling appointments at short notice, when required
• Liaising with clinical admin and CNS teams
  
  

Working for our organisation

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust provides NHS hospital services for around 900,000 people across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.

As well as delivering excellent general hospital services to local people, we provide specialist heart attack, vascular, stroke, spinal, cystic fibrosis and plastic surgery services across a much wider area.

We have three main hospitals - Frimley Park in Frimley near Camberley, Heatherwood in Ascot and Wexham Park near Slough.

Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other, Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.

We are also proud to host the Defence Medical Group South East at Frimley Park with military surgical, medical and nursing personnel working alongside the hospital's NHS staff providing care to patients in all specialties


Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

• To ensure all phone calls are dealt with in a professional and timely manner, adhering to the local targets set by the Surgery Directorate and the Trust
• To ensure all patients, colleagues and visitors are treated with dignity, respect and empathy at all times
• To support the Trust in delivering NHS targets
• To respond in a timely fashion to all administrative duties within the team
• Assist and be pro-active in all modernisation projects that concern the team and improve patient pathways
• To be multi-skilled in your working role and able to assist in all areas of the department as and when required
• To ensure strict confidentiality is maintained at all times in respect of correspondence received in the department and in accordance with Trust policy
• To ensure demographics and daytime contact numbers are obtained and checked on each individual call and updated on the patient administration system in accordance with Information Quality Assurance
• To adhere to the Trust Access Policy when patients do not keep appointments or wish to delay appointments or treatment
• To liaise with the team leader to provide a high-quality empathetic service and highlight any problems, working together as a customer focused team to solve issues that may arise
• To adhere to the Trust values of being committed to excellence, working together and facing the future
• Follow all Trust and local policies and procedures at all times
• To deal with patient/staff complaints in a professional manner and try to resolve the issue before they become formal
  
  

For a full list of responsibilities, please see the attached job description.


Person specification


Qualifications


Essential criteria

• GCSE English and Maths pass or equivalent
• ECDL or equivalent
  
  

Desirable criteria

• NVQ Level 2 Administration or equivalent practical knowledge
  
  

Experience


Essential criteria

• Experience of working in a hospital or busy office environment.
• Significant experience in difficult patient situations.
• Customer care experience
• Has used Epic/other electronic healthcare suite
  
  

Desirable criteria

• Call centre experience
• Previous booking experience
  
  

Skills


Essential criteria

• Good communication skills both verbal and in writing
• Excellent customer service skills and evidence of dealing with telephones and meeting targets
• Exceptional interpersonal skills
• Time management skills
• Ability to escalate any issues as necessary
• Persuasive/negotiating skills
• Logical thinker, able to reason, analyse situations effectively and deal with a multitude of queries
  
  

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of current NHS issues relating to the Referral To Treatment targets waiting lists and the Trust Access Policy
• Knowledge of medical terminology
• Knowledge of clinical and surgical procedures
  
  

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (FHFT) has an outstanding reputation and a proud record of achievement. As a well performing, well led and ambitious Foundation Trust, we have exciting times ahead of us. We have an ongoing commitment to improving the health and care services for the 900,000 people we serve across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.

We are proud of the ambitions laid out in our strategy, Our Future FHFT, including our vision to be a leader in health & wellbeing, delivering excellence for our communities.

We continue to invest in our services and facilities, including a £10 million upgrade to the hospital maternity unit as well as £49m major new Emergency Assessment Centre on our Wexham Park site. The opening of a brand new £100m state of the art hospital which replaced the existing hospital facility at Heatherwood and are planning to invest further in diagnostics and inpatient capacity at Frimley Park.

We have also made significant investment in our quality improvement and digital programmes to support our vision and we will ensure that we achieve our aim of providing the highest quality healthcare to our patients. Our new EPR – Epic – went live in June and we are already beginning to reap the benefits of this ambitious investment .

Our three cor