Head of Patient Referrals and Engagement

Talent 4 Good are supporting one of the UK's leading providers of community healthcare services, delivering high-quality NHS and private patient care closer to home to recruit a Head of Patient Referrals and Engagement

Role Title: Head of Patient Referrals and Engagement

Location: Hybrid

Salary: DOE £80,000 - £100,000pa

Department: Commercial

The role is accountable for the organisation's patient referral performance nationally. This role is central to ensure that patients are connected to their service pathways aligned with their NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) contracts, their private service, and their internal clinical service capacity.

The role holder sets the patient referral strategy, managing people, systems and process, deploying data-led targeting frameworks and driving a cross-functional referral management rhythm.

Role Responsibilities

Patient Referral Management

• Own and drive organisation’s national NHS primary care patient referral system, ensuring referral volume run rates are forecasted, tracked, managed and optimised against ICB contracts and private growth plans.
• Position the organisation as a trusted partner for our primary care referrer channel partners, including Single Point of Access providers (SPoA), Local Optical Committees (LOCs), optometrists, Primary Care Networks (PCNs), GP’s, Consortiums and Commercial Partners to improve access, choice, outcomes and experience for local communities, creating the platform to establish long-term multi-year contracts for all our services

Leadership

• Work as a member of the senior commercial leadership team, contributing to the overall commercial engine build and organisational growth agenda.
• Directly line manage the Community Partners team, providing structured leadership, coaching, performance management and field support.
• Build a high-performance team culture, establishing clear individual KPIs, regular performance reviews and structured development plans for all CPs.

Stakeholder Relationship Management

• Build and grow a systematic, data-led programme of relationships and advocacy development with Key Decision Makers (KDMs) and Key Influencers (KI) across our referral channel partners.
• Move from reactive to proactive, intelligence-driven engagement deploying the customer adoption ladder framework across referral channel partners.
• Adopt a consultative, customer needs to value approach by connecting the value and solutions to our referral partner needs, which delivers a win for the referral partner, win for the patient and a win for the organisation.

Knowledge, Skills &​ Experience

Essential

• Proven experience in NHS primary care engagement, referral management or community healthcare business development.
• Demonstrable experience of effective operational management, through people, systems and process which ensures the company delivers on its promise through proactive communication, coordination and management of demand and supply.
• Demonstrable ability to build and sustain senior relationships with KDMs and KIs
• Strong understanding of NHS primary care structures including PCNs, LOCs, LMCs, GP commissioning and SPoA processes.
• Direct experience managing field-based teams, including coaching and performance-management
• Track record of building high-performing teams through both direct and matrix management frameworks.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to use data to prioritise territories, manage run rates and drive performance improvement.
• Highly motivated, resilient and comfortable operating in a fast-paced, growth-focused environment. Strong commercial instinct.

Desirable

• Experience working within multiple specialities including Ophthalmology, Gastroenterology, Dermatology or ENT.
• Established network of KDM and KI contacts across Primary Care Networks, GP Consortiums, GP Practices, Local Optical Committee, Optometrists, Single Point of Access Providers, Commercial referral Partners.
• Experience of chairing cross-functional teams and rhythms aligned to a common objective through communication, collaboration, ownership and performance.
• Experience with CRM systems (e.g. HubSpot) and commercial reporting tools.
• Experience producing board-level reports, with clear insight and recommendations using both lead and lag KPIs
• Entrepreneurial mindset with the drive to build new referral partner channel relationships from scratch.