Senior Booking Clerk

Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS foundation Trust; Nechells; On-site; GBP 20,000 - 25,000; Full time

Job summary

A community healthcare provider in Nechells is seeking enthusiastic staff for their Central Booking Service team. The role involves managing appointments and providing excellent customer service to parents and service users. Responsibilities include accurate data input into the Patient Administration System and liaising with healthcare providers. Applicants should have strong communication skills and be dedicated to maintaining high levels of confidentiality. Join us in delivering integrated and outstanding care in your community.

Qualifications

• Enthusiastic, hardworking staff members are required.
• Must manage and book appointments efficiently.
• Ability to handle sensitive patient information with confidentiality.

Responsibilities

• Manage clinics and waiting lists effectively.
• Book appointments following Central Booking Service protocols.
• Collect demographic details from referrals.

Skills

Customer service

Data input accuracy

Communication skills

Tools

Patient Administration System (RiO)

Job description

This job advert will close as soon as sufficient applications have been received. Please apply for this job as soon as you can, if interested.

Overview

We are looking for enthusiastic, hardworking staff members to work in our busy Central Booking Service (CBS) within the Children and Families Division. The main duties for the post holder will be to provide support to the Central Booking Service and Operational Team Leader in order to provide a prompt and professional appointment booking and call management service to parents/carers/service users. The post holder will work as part of the CBS Team to ensure that calls to Health Visiting Services from parents are routed to the most appropriate clinicians and that patient appointments are booked over the telephone and also on the RIO system in line with the Central Booking Service processes.

The post holder will also ensure that there is prompt and accurate inputting of the clinical activity data onto the RIO system. The Central Booking Service (CBS) is often the first contact a parent/carer will have with the Children & Families Division and may be regarded as the ‘shop window’ for the Community Paediatric, Inclusion Services, Health Visiting Services and Educational Health and Care (EHC). The post holder will be required to provide excellent customer service to all service users ensuring that they are polite and courteous at all times.

The post holder will be responsible for the management of their own workload and will be expected to develop and maintain up-to-date knowledge of all services included within the Central Booking Service (CBS) which will enable them to deal with any service‑related queries. This is a multi‑skilled and multi‑tasked role, and therefore the post holder will be expected to rotate with other staff members to cover all areas within the CBS on a regular basis.

Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC) has more than 5000 staff working across Birmingham and the West Midlands in a wide range of community nursing and specialist healthcare roles. BCHC delivers over clinical services, in people's homes, health centres, clinics and inpatient facilities. We deliver a wide range of services for children, young people, parents and families as well as adults and community services, two community hospitals, services for people with learning disabilities, the internationally recognised West Midlands Rehabilitation Centre and one of Europe’s leading Dental Hospitals and School of Dentistry. We deliver all of this with a commitment to integrated, personalised care that is rooted in our local communities. We have an ambition to deliver outstanding, integrated care as one of the key NHS providers in the West Midlands.

If you want to ‘Be Part of Our Team’ and work with a Foundation Trust which is continuously striving for better care and healthier communities, we want to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities

1. Responsible for the management of clinics and waiting lists, within Community Paediatrics, Inclusion Services (Speech and Language Therapy, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy), Health Visiting & EHC.
2. Prepare and track clinical records for all patients booked within the CBS, ensuring that appropriate records such as referral letters are filed/stored appropriately in accordance with the Trust’s policies and procedures.
3. Responsible for the management and booking of appointments on the Patient Administration System (RiO) system as well as the Choose & Book system.
4. Responsible for calling the parents/carers of children who have not attended their appointments in order to ascertain the reason why and rebook a new appointment within the appropriate targeted timescales.
5. Responsible for carrying out any clinic changes/cancellations on the RIO system in accordance with the CBS Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

Appointment / Pre-Clinic Activity

1. Booking appointments within the appropriate clinic rules and within appropriate timescales in accordance with the CBS SOP, including making calls to parent/carers and receiving calls.
2. Supporting the directorate on national targets e.g. 18‑week Referral to Treatment (RTT) and Choose and Book (CaB).
3. Ensure patients are offered a choice of appointment in line with national guidance, wherever possible. Establishing if parental carers require interpreting services and liaising with Medical Secretaries to make appropriate arrangements.
4. Liaising closely with and responding to the queries from all stakeholders both internally and externally relating to appointments and activity, including clinic utilisation, reasons for non‑attendance and rescheduling clinics as required.
5. Ensuring all referral letters are date‑stamped and registered on the Patient Administration System (RIO) within 24 hours of receipt to ensure triage is arranged within the clinic rules.
6. Responsible for collecting missing demographic details from referrals and contacting the referring practitioners or patients directly to ensure completion of the referral documentation.
7. Ensuring that all clinic slots are fully utilised to avoid wasted capacity; where clinics are under‑utilised inform the Operational Team Leader or Central Booking Service & Activity Manager for appropriate action.
8. Ensuring that patients who have either requested changes to their appointment or have had the appointment changed by the clinicians are offered appropriate revised appointment dates over the telephone in accordance with 18‑week rules.
9. Ensuring all appointments made and/or changes made to existing appointments are confirmed by letter and recorded on the Patient Administration System (RiO).
10. Ensuring all short‑notice rescheduling of appointments are completed on RIO and followed up with a telephone confirmation with the parent/carer.

Post-Clinic Activity

1. Ensure accurate data inputting of the Community Paediatricians’ clinical activity onto the RIO system in line with the CBS SOP and Trust targets (no later than day 7 of the end of the working month).
2. Liaise with Community Paediatricians, Therapists, Health Visiting Teams and Local Authority regarding any queries with data quality to ensure accurate data is recorded.
3. Ensure all activity forms are filed appropriately and within a timely manner and are available for audit purposes.
4. Provide general non‑clinical information to patients and staff while maintaining patient confidentiality.

General Duties

1. Responsible for the supervision of the workload and training staff in the Booking Service, including covering the work of junior staff when they are on leave.
2. Taking part in the rotational tasks within the CBS, which includes ensuring all telephone lines are appropriately covered by staff on a daily basis.
3. Ensuring all standard operating procedures and codes of conduct are clearly adhered to and updated appropriately in line with guidance from the Central Booking Service & Activity Manager/Operational Team Leader.
4. To be involved in, and to undertake, audits and validation/actioning of reports as appropriate, also reviewing work carried out by junior staff.
5. Ensuring that high levels of confidentiality, in accordance with the Data Protection Act and Caldecott Principles, are adhered to at all times.
6. Partaking in an annual appraisal and agreeing a personal development plan which will include attending all mandatory training and participating in meetings as appropriate.
7. To take part in any ‘pilots/trials’ of new technology in relation to clinic activity collection.
8. Receiving complex and/or sensitive information regarding patients including Child Protection referrals.
9. Making up patient notes for all new patients and ensuring their dispatch to the appropriate clinic.
10. Maintaining up‑to‑date filing, ensuring archiving of all patient correspondence in line with Trust record‑keeping policy.
11. The post holder will be responsible for updating RIO following notifications of death by GPs and/or relatives.
12. Post holder will ensure to follow the escalation policy (part of the SOP) to ensure that any issues with clinic times, waits, data inputting are raised with the CBS Team Leader and Management at all times.

This advert closes on Friday 30 Jan 2026.