Job summary
A new and exciting opportunity has arisen for a Finance Business Partner - Commissioning employed by Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust but also working with Northampton General Hospital as part of the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire Group.
Working within a busy, forward thinking and progressive department, the post holder will be a key member of the team within the Finance Directorate, monitoring and advising on all financial aspects of the commissioning process. The focus of the role will predominantly be for Kettering General Hospital but as part of a UHN structure, will involve a level of cross working to include Northampton General Hospital..
The post holder will be responsible for monitoring activity and income due to the Trusts from commissioners under national and locally agreed pricing rules, providing monthly income figures for management teams in the Trusts, and for reporting to the Committee and Board structures.
The successful post holder will be need to be well organised with good IT skills, have excellent communication skills and experience of working with a range of corporate and clinical colleagues.
Main duties of the job
- Support the activity and financial planning processes for Clinical Contracts and Low Value Agreements.
- Prepare detailed and costed activity plans for inclusion in agreed contracts.
- Apply national and local tariff rules to calculate income due to the Trust, including maintenance of the Trusts contract monitoring system (SLAM). Ensure processes are in place to collect income due from commissioners.
- Preparing monthly returns for monitoring service level agreements (SLAs) to tight deadlines.
- Monitor financial impact of quality targets within SLAs
- Provide reports and analysis to finance and non finance managers in the Trusts to support management decision making.
- Support costing exercises as required.
- Provide specialist advice to finance and non-finance managers regarding National Tariff Payment System guidance and income implications of activity changes, keeping up to date with changes in national guidance.
- Manage regular reconciliations of activity and income to information held on the national Secondary Uses Service (SUS) system.
- Analyse data challenges and commissioner queries, highlighting areas of concern and risk to the Trust and ensuring that adjustments are contract compliant.
- Producing monthly reconciliations for commissioners and provide responses to relevant commissioner queries.
- Manage and develop the Finance Analyst (Income)
About us
Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest employers in the area and we are on an exciting journey. Our mission is to provide safe, compassionate, and clinically excellent patient care, by being an outstanding employer for our people. We have entered into a Group Model with neighbouring Northampton General Hospital and have become University Hospitals of Northamptonshire. Our Excellence Values: Compassion Respect Integrity Courageous Accountable
Job description
Job responsibilities
The Postholders duties and responsibilities include:
- Applying national and local tariff rules to calculate income due to the Trust for all block and activity based contracts and Low Value Activity processes, liaising as appropriate, with the accounts receivable section. This includes maintenance of the Trusts contract monitoring system (SLAM) and manipulation of information in excel and access.
- Preparing monthly returns for monitoring service level agreements (SLAs) to tight deadlines. This includes ensuring the activity and income data is accurate and robust as management decisions will be made based on this monitoring data.
- Monitoring financial impact of any quality targets within SLAs
- Ensuring processes are in place to collect income due from commissioners, including liaising with representatives from these organisations, and reconciling invoices raised and/or cash receipts to income reported.
- Attending meetings with external commissioners as required, regarding operational commissioning and technical issues.
- Supporting negotiations with the local ICB, NHS England on Specialist Commissioning, Public Health, Secondary Dental and Associates to the main
- To support these negotiations, develop and cost Indicative Activity Plans, provide advice and guidance in relation to the Trust internal business planning process and develop financial plans using agreed activity numbers.
- Attending UHN and individual Trust Management meetings and Committees as required.
- Providing reports and ad-hoc analysis to finance and non finance managers in the Trusts to support management decision making.
- Supporting costing exercises as required to support negotiation of prices for services excluded from National Tariffs.
- Liaising with key finance and performance staff to ensure robust activity and financial data is provided for pricing and income calculation purposes. This includes reconciling all data to statutory returns and will be subject to audit.
- Liaising with key service managers and clinicians to implement collection of new activity requirements for income purposes e.g. for unbundling of tariff / Best Practice Tariffs
- Support contract negotiations / processes e.g. coding and counting to ensure the Trust receives all income due.
- Providing specialist advice to finance and non-finance managers regarding National Tariff Payment System guidance and income implications of activity changes.
- Keeping up to date with changes in national guidance regarding commissioning to ensure full understanding of changes to national requirements as they are introduced, and in order to give specialist advice as required.
- Managing regular reconciliations of activity and income to information held on the national Secondary Uses Service (SUS) system.
- Analysing data challenges and commissioner queries, highlighting areas of concern and risk to the Trust and ensuring that adjustments are contract compliant. This will include reconciliation and preparation of variations to the contract.
- Producing monthly reconciliations for commissioners and provide responses to relevant commissioner queries stemming from this information.
- Produce activity and income forecasting by Commissioner to inform decision making and to highlight trends. Undertaking modelling exercises as required determining the impact of different what if scenarios on activity based income.
- Undertaking variance analysis exercises between tariff and local costs.
- Liaise with Health Intelligence, Data Quality and Coding to ensure information reported is in line with Data Dictionary definitions and to keep up to date with any Trust changes.
- Maintaining and developing SLAM reports to ensure SLAM software is maintained and developed to produce robust output for Service Line Reporting.
- To manage and develop the Finance Analyst (Income)
Communications and Key Working Relationships
Internal
- UHN CFO and Deputy, Trust Director of Finance and other Executives
- Business Partners and other Finance Managers
- Deputy Chief Operating Officers
- Business Unit Directors
- Clinical Directors
- General Managers
- Health Intelligence
- Service Managers within the Trust
External
- Commissioners (ICBs)
- NHS England
Other NHS Trusts
Job description
Job responsibilities
The Postholders duties and responsibilities include:
- Applying national and local tariff rules to calculate income due to the Trust for all block and activity based contracts and Low Value Activity processes, liaising as appropriate, with the accounts receivable section. This includes maintenance of the Trusts contract monitoring system (SLAM) and manipulation of information in excel and access.
- Preparing monthly returns for monitoring service level agreements (SLAs) to tight deadlines. This includes ensuring the activity and income data is accurate and robust as management decisions will be made based on this monitoring data.
- Monitoring financial impact of any quality targets within SLAs
- Ensuring processes are in place to collect income due from commissioners, including liaising with representatives from these organisations, and reconciling invoices raised and/or cash receipts to income reported.
- Attending meetings with external commissioners as required, regarding operational commissioning and technical issues.
- Supporting negotiations with the local ICB, NHS England on Specialist Commissioning, Public Health, Secondary Dental and Associates to the main
- To support these negotiations, develop and cost Indicative Activity Plans, provide advice and guidance in relation to the Trust internal business planning process and develop financial plans using agreed activity numbers.
- Attending UHN and individual Trust Management meetings and Committees as required.
- Providing reports and ad-hoc analysis to finance and non finance managers in the Trusts to support management decision making.
- Supporting costing exercises as required to support negotiation of prices for services excluded from National Tariffs.
- Liaising with key finance and performance staff to ensure robust activity and financial data is provided for pricing and income calculation purposes. This includes reconciling all data to statutory returns and will be subject to audit.
- Liaising with key service managers and clinicians to implement collection of new activity requirements for income purposes e.g. for unbundling of tariff / Best Practice Tariffs
- Support contract negotiations / processes e.g. coding and counting to ensure the Trust receives all income due.
- Providing specialist advice to finance and non-finance managers regarding National Tariff Payment System guidance and income implications of activity changes.
- Keeping up to date with changes in national guidance regarding commissioning to ensure full understanding of changes to national requirements as they are introduced, and in order to give specialist advice as required.
- Managing regular reconciliations of activity and income to information held on the national Secondary Uses Service (SUS) system.
- Analysing data challenges and commissioner queries, highlighting areas of concern and risk to the Trust and ensuring that adjustments are contract compliant. This will include reconciliation and preparation of variations to the contract.
- Producing monthly reconciliations for commissioners and provide responses to relevant commissioner queries stemming from this information.
- Produce activity and income forecasting by Commissioner to inform decision making and to highlight trends. Undertaking modelling exercises as required determining the impact of different what if scenarios on activity based income.
- Undertaking variance analysis exercises between tariff and local costs.
- Liaise with Health Intelligence, Data Quality and Coding to ensure information reported is in line with Data Dictionary definitions and to keep up to date with any Trust changes.
- Maintaining and developing SLAM reports to ensure SLAM software is maintained and developed to produce robust output for Service Line Reporting.
- To manage and develop the Finance Analyst (Income)
Communications and Key Working Relationships
Internal
- UHN CFO and Deputy, Trust Director of Finance and other Executives
- Business Partners and other Finance Managers
- Deputy Chief Operating Officers
- Business Unit Directors
- Clinical Directors
- General Managers
- Health Intelligence
- Service Managers within the Trust
External
- Commissioners (ICBs)
- NHS England
Other NHS Trusts
Person Specification
Education
Essential
- Educated to Degree Level or equivalent
Desirable
- CCAB qualified, or have made significant progression towards a CCAB professional Accountancy qualification.
Knowledge and Experience
Essential
- Minimum 5 years experience in NHS Commissioning or Finance
- Experience of the design, format and use of complex spreadsheets and databases
- In-depth experience of; national commissioning and National Tariff Payment System guidance in order to give specialist advice in this area.
Desirable
- Working knoweldge of Foundation Trust Regime
- An ability to analyse complex financial and performance data and draw appropriate conclusions
Skills
Essential
- Excellent Verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent mathematical and analytical skills to analyse and interpret highly complex data.
- Ability to plan and coordinate complex programmes of activities in own area, and in areas which impact across other departments, in order to calculate the monthly income due by tight deadlines.
- Ability to forecast income using a wide range of data and assumptions
Person Specification
Education
Essential
- Educated to Degree Level or equivalent
Desirable
- CCAB qualified, or have made significant progression towards a CCAB professional Accountancy qualification.
Knowledge and Experience
Essential
- Minimum 5 years experience in NHS Commissioning or Finance
- Experience of the design, format and use of complex spreadsheets and databases
- In-depth experience of; national commissioning and National Tariff Payment System guidance in order to give specialist advice in this area.
Desirable
- Working knoweldge of Foundation Trust Regime
- An ability to analyse complex financial and performance data and draw appropriate conclusions
Skills
Essential
- Excellent Verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent mathematical and analytical skills to analyse and interpret highly complex data.
- Ability to plan and coordinate complex programmes of activities in own area, and in areas which impact across other departments, in order to calculate the monthly income due by tight deadlines.
- Ability to forecast income using a wide range of data and assumptions
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
Additional information
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
