Senior Medical Advisor at Discovery Limited

Job description

Key Purpose

The incumbent’s role is to be the central player in the Clinical Services area to identify and ensure that optimal clinical decision making is made on every escalated case. The individual is directly responsible for aligning the teams within the division to fulfil strategic clinical needs within these sectors. Identifying and establishing best practice for effective clinical decision making and to fulfill the role as Head of the Medical Advisors and provide constant guidance and support to the Medical Advisors and to promote the use of Evidence Based Medicine in clinical decision making.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

The successful applicant will be responsible for but not limited to the following job functions:

• To ensure that principles of health economics and rationale resource allocation are incorporated into funding decisions. Constantly challenging and shaping the status quo.
• Overseeing the success of the division by liaising with major stakeholders in the business.
• Building effective relationships to create strategies and translate these into effective deliverables to ensure successful execution thereof.
• Owning and chairing key forums with participants at an executive level.
• Constant interaction with highly strategic thinkers and relationship building on an executive business level.
• Developing strategic and operational plans to drive, lead, and represent all projects and key initiatives impacting the division.
• Monitor the implementation of risk management strategies within the Division.
• Keeping abreast with legislative and industry changes and how this affects your business units.
• Analyzing and problem solving by identifying key issues and relationships from a base of information.
• Effective decision-making by applying entrepreneurial knowledge and “out of the box” thinking and weighing up the risks involved.
• Providing feedback to the clinical governance forum on a quarterly basis
• Constantly remaining updated with medical technology, innovation and latest clinical information
• Function as direct line manager for the Medical Advisors and Clinical Manager providing all necessary functional and administrative support to direct reports.
• Responsible for managing the budget of the CAS division
• To monitor performance within the department and ensure that trends are identified and corrective action is taken where necessary
• SOPs: Responsible for SOPs related to CAS (these will be signed by individual managers prior to implementation)
• Training: to support the Clinical Services department with developing training manuals, implementation of all training, quality initiatives, auditing and reporting including, error identifying, tracking and root cause analysis & trending. Overall responsibility for clinical training done within the Clinical Services department including the identification of training needs and the implementation of this training.
• Audits: Responsible for making comments on all audits and findings. Audit report sign- off by DM before report goes to DGM
• Integration: responsible for ensuring all CS operational and clinical initiatives and integration into broader business strategy and workflow integration to meet all SLA requirements and organizational requirements.
• Operations Support: will be responsible for the CS operations meeting, data extraction and management, and support for the operations executive in preparing for the meeting (agenda, minutes & action implementation)
• SharePoint: will be responsible for all knowledge management and document handling and repository in CS.

Personal Attributes and Skills

• Strategic Agility: Sees ahead clearly; can anticipate future consequences and trends accurately; has broad knowledge and perspective; is future oriented; can articulately paint credible pictures and visions of possibilities and likelihoods; can create competitive and breakthrough strategies and plans.
• Planning: Accurately scopes out length and difficulty of tasks and projects; sets objectives and goals; breaks down work into the process steps; develops schedules and task/people assignments; anticipates and adjusts for problems and roadblocks; measures performance against goals; evaluates results.
• Developing Direct Reports and others: Provides challenging and stretching tasks and assignments; holds frequent development discussions; is aware of each person's career goals; constructs compelling development plans and executes them; pushes people to accept developmental moves; will take on those who need help and further development; cooperates with the developmental system in the organization; is a people builder.
• Managerial Courage: Doesn't hold back anything that needs to be said; provides current, direct, complete, and "actionable" positive and corrective feedback to others; lets people know where they stand; faces up to people problems on any person or situation (not including direct reports) quickly and directly; is not afraid to take negative action when necessary.
• Organisational Agility: Knowledgeable about how organizations work; knows how to get things done both through formal channels and the informal network; understands the origin and reasoning behind key policies, practices, and procedures; understands the cultures of organizations.
• Motivating Others: Creates a climate in which people want to do their best; can motivate many kinds of direct reports and team or project members; can assess each person's hot button and use it to get the best out of him/her; pushes tasks and decisions down; empowers others; invites input from each person and shares ownership and visibility; makes each individual feel his/her work is important; is someone people like working for and with.
• Dealing with Paradox: Can act in ways that seem contradictory; is very flexible and adaptable when facing tough calls; can combine seeming opposites like being compassionately tough, stand up for self without trampling others, set strong but flexible standards; can act differently depending upon the situation; is seen as balanced despite the conflicting demands of the situation.

Knowledge and Skills

• Advanced knowledge in Clinical Procedures
• Advanced knowledge in Discovery Products
• Advanced knowledge in Risk Strategies
• Intermediate knowledge of PMBs
• Intermediate benefit knowledge
• Intermediate knowledge of system architecture
• Intermediate knowledge of Clinical Analytics
• Advanced skills in Verbal and Written Communication, MS office, Paradigm and in-house IT systems
• Advanced skills in Relationship Management
• Intermediate skills in Analytics

Education and Experience
The following requirements are essential:

• Matric
• MBBCH
• 2 years Clinical Experience
• 3 years Discovery Health medical advisor or related experience
• 1 year Stakeholder relationship management experience
• Registered with relevant professional body

The following requirements will be advantageous:

Registered with relevant professional body