Clinical Quality Lead

Job responsibilities

Communication and Working Relationship Skills

• Build and maintain strong partnerships with NHS England, Clinical Commissioning Hub, CQC, local authorities, ICBs, providers, and patient representatives, ensuring service design is informed by the patient voice.
• Chair and participate in meetings, fostering robust collaboration and influencing stakeholders with gravitas and emotional intelligence.
• Support the review and development of quality processes, safeguarding policies, and improvement programmes across NHS, independent, voluntary, and cross-boundary providers.
• Prepare and present high-quality reports, briefings, and recommendations, ensuring complex, sensitive or contentious information is conveyed clearly, concisely, and sensitively to senior audiences.
• Provide specialist advice to workstreams and senate on complex and sensitive issues.
• Support high-level service reviews, delivering constructive feedback (positive and negative) to drive improvement in quality and safeguarding standards.
• Demonstrate advanced conflict resolution, negotiation, and relationship-building skills to manage competing priorities across organisations under NHS pressures.
• Contribute to local networks, sharing best practice, promoting a culture of learning, and strengthening collaborative approaches.
• Develop inclusive, supportive, and high-performing partnerships across health, social care, voluntary sector, and partner agencies to improve outcomes for patients, service users, and carers.
• Represents the Provider Collaborative at clinical quality national forums
• May present complex, sensitive, and politically significant information to leadership groups, influencing strategic decisions across the region.

Analytical and Judgemental Skills

• Provide expert clinical and analytical judgement to interpret highly complex data and situations, oversee quality reviews, escalate concerns, and support evidence-based decision-making.
• Lead on clinical quality oversight, identifying and resolving complex issues, analysing and interpreting risks, and balancing differing professional opinions.
• Produce and present complex reports at local and regional levels, ensuring clarity and insight for senior decision-makers.
• Maintain expert knowledge of statutory and non-statutory requirements for quality and safeguarding to ensure compliance and best practice.
• Represent the Provider Collaborative regionally
• Responsible for high-level clinical quality risk assessments, making recommendations that may lead to suspension of provider admissions, contractual sanctions, or regional escalation.
• Requires highly developed specialist knowledge of clinical quality, commissioning, mental health legislation, and quality governance equivalent to masters level plus extensive experience, applied across multiple complex organisations.
• Recognised as a subject matter expert for clinical quality across the entire Provider Collaborative footprint.

Planning and Organisational Skills

• Apply programme management, planning, and organisational skills to design, implement, and sustain systems, processes, and workstreams that deliver the clinical quality aims of the South West Provider Collaborative across commissioned services.
• Support commissioning and business planning, working with the Deputy Medical Director and senior operational leaders to ensure services meet agreed specifications, clinical models, and standards.
• Benchmark performance and develop long-term strategies, using data and intelligence to identify improvements, adjust plans, and support the drive of quality outcomes across in-region providers.
• Develop and implement quality improvement programmes, drawing on patient experience, complaints, and serious incidents to ensure continuous learning and better outcomes.

Responsibility for Patient/Client Care, Treatment and Therapy

• Provides highly specialised advice on clinical quality within the collaborative.
• Work through Expert by Experience Lead to ensure patient and carer voices are central to commissioning and service improvement, embedding their involvement at all levels of decision-making.
• Champion patient interests, acting as an advocate in policy development and collaborative decision-making with regional and national partners.
• Ensure high standards of patient and public engagement, making all contact with the Provider Collaborative professional, inclusive, and responsive.
• Promote a culture of safety and continuous improvement, embedding best practice and learning across the organisation.

Responsibility for Policy and Service Development Implementation

• The post holder will be responsible for leading a range of regional and organisational policy development and implementation across all service lines across the collaborative.
• Where appropriate, the post holder is expected to interpret national and organisational policies and establish local implementation of specific policies relevant to commissioning of services.
• Keep abreast of national policy and practice developments in mental health service provision and development and to ensure that knowledge and evidence of best practice and innovation is available to inform strategic developments and transformation across the South West region.
• Lead on developing processes for monitoring quality of commissioned providers, ensuring alignment with statutory duties, and reviewing national policy implications for local implementation.
• Leads the creation, implementation, and evaluation of regional clinical quality policies across NHS and independent sector providers.
• Has lead responsibility for developing and implementing regional clinical quality policies that set standards across multiple NHS and independent sector providers, with authority to require changes to provider practice.

Responsibility for Finance, Equipment and Other Resources

• The post holder is responsible for the quality team budget with authority for authorising expenditure.
• The post holder is responsible for ensuring that management of the allocated budgets and physical resources is compliant with all relevant financial regulations and financial standing orders; financial reporting is timely, accurate and the information is applied to the management of budgets and that commissioned services provide value for money against national/market benchmarks.
• Provides senior clinical quality input into commissioning decisions affecting multi-million-pound budgets, including recommending contractual levers, sanctions, or enhanced surveillance where quality concerns arise
• Provides senior clinical quality advice directly informing commissioning decisions and cost improvement programmes, ensuring that quality, safety and outcomes are integral to financial planning.
• Shares information linked to contractual sanctions, performance notices and enhanced surveillance arrangements where providers fail to meet required standards

Responsibility for Human Resources, e.g. Supervision, Training, HR Advice and Management

• The post holder will be responsible for the effective recruitment, line management, supervision, appraisal, coaching and performance management of staff within the quality team and will ensure that their teams work in accordance with the aims and values of the South West Provider Collaborative.
• The post holder may at times be required to be involved in the management of disciplinary procedures, undertake staff consultation and consider welfare and safety matters.

Responsibility for Information Resources and Administrative Duties

• Ensure compliance with GDPR, ICT, Data Protection Act, Freedom of Information Act, and other national information requirements.
• Use software and data systems to review, and interpret quality, performance, and safeguarding data.
• Oversee quality monitoring of Independent Sector Providers within the geographical footprint of the South West Provider Collaborative.

Responsibility for Research and Development

• Coordinate clinical quality assurance and performance reporting
• Undertake and oversee audits, surveys, and research to inform business intelligence, service planning, and commissioning.
• Promote best practice and share research and learning across the team and wider organisation
• Analyse outcomes of audits and research to improve quality of care, service delivery, and commercial activities.
• Ensure outcomes for patients and carers are measured, evaluated, and used to shape future interventions and improvements.

Freedom to Act

• Is guided by general health, organisational and broad occupational policies but will need to establish the way these are interpreted.
• Acts as the organisations senior autonomous clinical quality lead, making independent decisions with significant impact on regional service performance and patient safety.

Any Other Specific Tasks Required

• The post holder will be responsible for carrying out such special duties or projects as may be determined by the request of the South West Provider Collaborative Governance.
• The post holder will be expected to participate in the South West Provider Collaboratives Commissioning on-call arrangements.
• The post holder will be expected to maintain their own competence and up to date knowledge of key developments in respect of national policy, legislation and best practice in clinical quality oversight.

Qualifications

Essential

• Educated to degree plus masters level qualification or equivalent experience
• Clinical professional registration.
• Evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development.

Qualifications

Essential

• Educated to degree plus masters level qualification or equivalent experience
• Clinical professional registration.
• Evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development.

Experience

Essential

• Evidence of quality improvement and report writing skills
• Recent experience of working within a commissioning team.

Additional Skills

Essential

• Knowledge: Essential
• Knowledge of health and care, including commissioning
• Able to understand and analyse complex issues and balance competing priorities in order to make difficult decisions.
• Communication and Working Relationship Skills: Essential
• Able to communicate complex issues in accessible language in various forums such as internal meetings and meetings within the system.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, able to influence and persuade others articulating a balanced view and able to constructively question information from others.
• Excellent understanding of the role of effective communications and engagement with patients, public, workforce and stakeholders in achieving/delivering objectives and maintaining and enhancing its reputation.
• Proven ability to foster and maintain positive working relationships.
• Analytical and Judgemental Skills
• Collecting, analysing and evaluating highly complex data to support the management of clinical commissioning for a wide range of applications including resource, planning and target setting.
• High level analytical skills and the ability to draw qualitative and quantitative data from a wide range of sources and present in a clear concise manner.
• Excellent ability to analyse numerical and written data, assess options and draw appropriate conclusions.
• Planning and Organisational Skills: Essential
• Proven ability to prioritise and respond professionally to extremely tight timescales, while under pressure.
• Physical Skills: Essential
• Standard keyboard skills.
• Ability to travel to various sites and locations in the South West.
• Other: Essential
• An Enhanced DBS Check may be required for this role.

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).