Job responsibilities
Job Title: Cancer 2 Week Wait Officer
Band: 3 12months Fixed term Maternity Cover
Hours of Work (p/w): 37.5 hrs per week
Service Centre/Directorate: Cancer Services, Allied Clinical Services
Base: QEH
Accountable to: General Manager, Cancer and Palliative Care
Reports to: Cancer Applications and Performance Manager
Key working relationships:
- Admissions and Bookings leads and teams
- Outpatients leads and teams
- Cancer MDT Co-ordinators
- Cancer Clinical Directorate
- General Practitioners
Role of the Department:
Job Summary:
The Cancer Waiting Timesstandards are a national priority and a key performance measure for the Trust. From 1 October 2023, NHS England streamlined the cancer waiting times framework to focus on three headline targets: the Faster Diagnosis Standard, the 31-Day Decision-to-Treat Standard, and the 62-Day Referral-to-Treatment Standard.
This role is central to ensuring the smooth running of the Two Week Wait Office, delivering a prompt and efficient service by coordinating patient appointments and pathway activity in line with the national Cancer Waiting Times standards.
Main Duties/Key Results Areas:
- Two Week Rule Responsibilities
- To act as the main point of contact on a daily basis for patients who have been referred in with urgent suspected cancer and to manage this complex and sensitive information appropriately and with tact as patients may be anxious or unaware of the reason for their referral.
- To take responsibility for processing all GP letters, electronic referrals, faxes, telephone calls and emails in relation to the Cancer Two Week Wait Standard.
- Assist the Two Week Wait Co-ordinator to ensure the smooth running of the office and be able to cover accordingly in the absence of the Co-ordinator.
- Prioritise the daily workload to ensure that any referrals received, and all urgent matters are dealt with as soon as possible within the relevant Cancer Waiting Time targets and ensure a high level of administrative and clerical support is available.
- Input and extract information via the Trusts Patient Information Management System (iCare) and the Trusts Cancer Tracking and Reporting system as required.
- Record all referrals received into the department on a daily basis, scanning them onto the system and inputting all appointment and patient details onto the required databases that are used within the Trust.
- To liaise with the designated Managers, Consultants secretaries, the Call Centre and medical records as required to identify all appropriate referrals for inclusion in the Standard that have not been received centrally. This may be in person, on the telephone or electronically.
- To liaise with patients to offer choice in line with local and national policies on access, booking and choice.
- To take full responsibility for escalating potential breaches to the relevant manager and identifying possible future capacity issues across all specialists.
- To appropriately prioritise booking of appointments during periods of increased referrals, incorporating management of clinician leave.
- Ensure that the patient notes are collected and given to the relevant team if a TWR is booked at very short notice (within 1 working day of appointment).
- Review and assess referrals into the Trust in order to appropriately allocate them to clinical specialities or subspecialities. To then regularly check on the status of the appointment if the referral is handled outside of the postholder.
- Liaise with GPs, providing information and support regarding TWRs. In particular regarding inappropriate referrals, non-use of the TWR proformas and timeliness of receiving referrals.
- Postholders would be expected to follow policies to ensure the above areas are both monitored and managed effectively.
- Ensure both the local and national systems used for recording and reporting cancer waiting times are updated with the details for each patient dealt with by the TWR office in order to audit and monitor cancer waiting times targets.
- Ensure patient choice standards are adhered to when booking appointments and that any cancellations or non-attendance of appointments by patients is correctly recorded on the appropriate local and national systems.
- To deal with all queries from patients and staff in a polite, professional and courteous manner.
- Process all new patient referrals ensuring accurate data entry, making every attempt to contact the patient by telephone on two separate occasions before generating appointment letters for dispatch from the appropriate Trust systems, ensuring all required relevant documentation is attached.
- To ensure that appropriate checks are in place and made regularly to ensure that any routine scanned referrals that are upgraded by Consultants are actioned, recorded appropriately and the necessary appointments arranged.
- Be aware at all times of the important nature of the work dealt with in the Cancer Data Team and how this could impact on patient care and possible breaches of targets and how everyone within the team must be accountable for their part in this process at all times.
- To work with the MDT Co-ordinators to ensure all cancer cases are adequately reported both locally and nationally.
- To use any of the local or national tools available to monitor incoming referrals from other Trusts.
- To use the hospital computer systems to track case notes and collect data.
- To validate data and take corrective action where required.
