Senior System Coordination Centre Manager

Job overview

Can you bring calm, clarity and connection when health services are under pressure?

As a Senior Manager in Central East’s System Coordination Centre (SCC), you will help turn a complex, changing operational picture into coordinated action that supports safe patient care.

Working with Trusts across Central East, you will bring partners together to understand pressures, tackle barriers to patient flow and agree practical responses. From ambulance handover delays to hospital capacity and discharge challenges, your work will connect individual services with the wider system response.

We are looking for someone who combines sound operational judgement with excellent relationship skills. You will be able to interpret information, ask the right questions and influence action while remaining calm and solution-focused.

Alongside managing today’s pressures, you will help us anticipate tomorrow’s challenges using data, learning and forecasting to strengthen preparedness and improve how the SCC works.

This role is home-based with occasional travel to ICB offices and hospitals across the Central East area. Two posts are available with different shift patterns, working across the 8am - 6pm seven day a week service operating times.

Main duties of the job

You will combine daily operational leadership with work to improve system resilience:

• Build the operational picture: bring together real-time information on capacity, demand and patient flow, identifying risks and where coordinated support is needed.
• Turn discussion into action: lead operational calls and conversations, agree clear actions with partners and follow through on delivery.
• Coordinate responses to pressure: support escalation, surge and incident responses, ensuring risks reach the right decision-makers promptly.
• Connect services and people: work with hospital, ambulance, community, mental health and wider partners to address barriers and support safe patient flow.
• Look ahead: contribute to winter and surge planning, using trends and forecasting to identify opportunities for earlier intervention.
• Provide clear assurance: produce accurate situation reports and briefings for senior leaders and NHS England.
• Improve how we work: develop SCC processes, digital tools and use of data, while providing supportive leadership to colleagues and sharing learning across the system.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Specific responsibilities:

• Manage the day-to-day operations of the System Coordination Centre (SCC) ensuring effective coordination across health and care services in Central East.
• Maintain real time oversight of system capacity, flow and performance.
• Lead operational responses to system pressures, including surge and escalation management.
• Work collaboratively with providers, commissioners and partners to resolve operational challenges, implement best practice approaches to enhance efficiency and responsiveness.
• Monitor key operational metrics, identifying trends and risks, recommending action to maintain system resilience, ensuring timely reports and escalation to senior leaders as appropriate.
• Drive continuous improvement in SCC processes, including use of digital tools and data analytics, increasingly focused on forecasting and risk identification for preventative interventions.
• Act as the primary point of contact for operational coordination across the ICS, contributing to operational planning, development of winter and surge processes and procedures.
• Ensure timely and accurate reporting to NHS England and other bodies to provide assurance on real time operational pressures, mitigations and risk management.