Head of Patient Access

King Edward VII's Hospital · King Edward VII Hospital · Competitive Salary · onsite At King Edward VII's Hospital, exceptional healthcare begins long before treatment starts. As our Head of Patient Access, you'll play a pivotal role in ensuring patients, consultants and colleagues experience a seamless, efficient and exceptional journey from first contact through to admission and beyond. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, you'll provide senior operational leadership across a diverse portfolio including Contact Centre, Reservations, Front of House and Security services. You'll also lead the Hospital's Business Continuity Planning and Sustainability Strategy, helping to ensure operational resilience while supporting the delivery of our long-term strategic objectives. This is an outstanding opportunity for an experienced operational leader to influence patient access, optimise capacity and service utilisation, lead transformational improvement programmes and enhance patient and consultant experience within one of the UK's most respected independent hospitals. How you'll help us make health happen Lead the Contact Centre and Reservations functions, ensuring responsive, accurate and patient-centred enquiry, booking and admission processes. Provide senior leadership and oversight for Front of House, reception, portering and Security services, ensuring a safe, welcoming and efficient environment for patients, consultants and visitors. Work closely with Heads of Department, Finance and Transformation teams to understand demand, capacity and service utilisation, identifying opportunities to improve operational efficiency and maximise available resources. Develop and maintain operational performance reporting, using activity, productivity, capacity, utilisation and financial data to identify trends, bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement. Drive service improvement, transformation and process redesign initiatives that enhance patient access, operational performance and patient experience. Lead the Hospital's Business Continuity Planning and operational resilience programme, ensuring plans are maintained, tested and aligned to organisational requirements. Lead delivery of the Hospital's Sustainability Strategy, working collaboratively across departments and with Bupa to embed sustainable practices and monitor progress against agreed objectives. Provide visible leadership to managers and teams across the portfolio, ensuring effective workforce management, performance development and delivery against agreed objectives. Manage delegated budgets, contracts and supplier relationships, identifying opportunities for efficiencies while maintaining safety, quality and experience standards. Work collaboratively with consultants, clinical teams, senior leaders, Bupa teams and external partners to support organisational objectives and service excellence. Ensure risks, incidents, complaints, audit actions and service issues are appropriately managed, providing assurance and performance updates to the Chief Operating Officer. Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement and exceptional customer service across all patient access functions. Key Skills / Qualifications Essential Significant senior operational management experience within healthcare or another complex, highly regulated service environment. Strong leadership experience across multiple operational services, with responsibility for managers, teams, suppliers and outsourced or managed service providers. Experience leading patient access, customer contact, booking, admissions or comparable high-volume service operations. Strong analytical and commercial skills, with experience using capacity, utilisation, productivity, financial and performance data to drive operational improvement. Proven experience delivering service improvement, operational transformation or process redesign programmes. Knowledge of business continuity, operational resilience and risk management,