Band 8a Virtual Ward Implementation Manager | Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Overview

Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC) has a vision to roll out virtual wards successfully across various clinical pathways in the next few years. This includes Virtual Wards (VW), providing urgent care for people in their homes through urgent community response services to avoid the need for a hospital admission.

In line with this strategic vision, and a similar vision at the ICs level, West Midlands 5G (WM5G) network have been commissioned to assist care organisations in the region with developing the Birmingham and Solihull Virtual Care strategy, a piece of work that is underway. Close liaison and collaboration is required with the team who are working on this strategy, to ensure the needs of our patient population and the set‑up of teams and pathways are appropriately taken into consideration when setting out the longer term strategy.

In addition, the Trust is now a delivery partner in a regional NIHR funded research project titled “A stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial of a virtual ward programme for patients with acute exacerbations of respiratory disease: protocol for the BRIDGE study”. The study will run over a 24‑month period between 2025 and 2027. Coordination with the study team and successful delivery of the project requires dedicated input and resource allocation from the Trust.

In light of these ambitions and development, this post of “Virtual Ward Implementation Manager” has been created.

• To work with University of Birmingham on the delivery of the BRIDGE research project
• To revive the use of remote monitoring technology in care‑homes, with lessons learnt from its previous attempts at locality hubs
• To address the low uptake of Respiratory Virtual Ward from the available capacity
• Liaise with WM5G and their associates for the development of the BSOL Virtual Care strategy and ensure BCHC’s interests and that of our patients are taken into consideration
• To support the virtual wards team with the implementation, expansion and continuous improvement of virtual ward pathways and models in line with local and national strategic priorities.
• Development of policy and procedures to facilitate VW activity across the Trust. The post holder will be expected to both keep the policy up‑to‑date and to ensure that it is adhered to across the Trust through monitoring.
• Through the application of project management skills, deliver and manage VW technologies for clinical delivery, including deployment of the technology
• Support integration with existing data infrastructure
• Evaluate the VW programme and write reports
• Develop business cases, project plans, timelines, milestones and deliverables
• Support the implementation or scaling of virtual ward services (new pathways, expansion)

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• Support the VW function within the Trust.
• May involve line management responsbilities of other virtual ward colleagues.
• Have an understanding of the national perspective and future strategy for the NHS and related areas of health to ensure that staff in your team/s are fully aware of the implications and can contribute effectively to service improvement.
• Responsible for the virtual ward research programme budget at BCHC.
• Lead the collaboration with clinical staff and industrial/academic partners to develop strong funding applications for continuity and growth of the VW programme and associated research projects.
• Lead the development of funding applications ensuring compliance with grant giving body requirements for individual funding bodies.

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