Senior Strategy Analyst

Senior Strategy Analyst

Job description

Job summary

An exciting opportunity has arisen - the Strategy Team at North West London Integrated Care Board is looking for candidates who are passionate about strategy and transforming healthcare and can support the ICB on a fixed term basis from September 2024 to February 2025.

The postholder will be joining a small, enthusiastic team working at the heart of the ICS to transform the healthcare of million residents.

The Strategy Team supports the ICS programmes and central functions to :

- Embed an evidence-based problem solving approach in the development of the ICS strategies.
- Define the right level of care for each segment of our population.
- Set, and measure,





the appropriate outcomes for each segment of our population.
- Understand the cost of providing the right level of care that meets the desired outcomes, assuming optimal delivery / productivity.
- Set shared core standards to ensure equity across NWL.
- Produce strategies that are clear and concise, and founded on robust evidence.
- Develop methodologies, tools, and templates, informed by industry best practice.
- Use contracts, reimbursement mechanisms and other levers to deliver the right level of care effectively at the right cost to deliver the set outcomes.

Main duties of the job

The postholder will work directly with the Executive Director of Strategy and Population Health and the Head of Strategy to support on the following projects, amongst others :

- The urgent and emergency care UEC strategy for North West London which will outline how we will deliver a high quality and accessible suite of UEC services to suit our populations needs this includes elements such as A&E; departments, urgent treatment centres,





enhancing patient navigation through 111 and digital front doors, keeping people healthier closer to home, etc.
- Supporting the Joint Forward Plan development for FY25 / 26 outlining the ambitions and plans for each of the ICS programmes, boroughs, corporate teams plans for FY25 / 26 and the subsequent 4 years including how each plan links together.
- The planned care strategy for NWL this will involve working alongside our planned care team, our acute providers and other ICS partners to strategically reduce our waiting lists and provide high quality in planned care in a sustainable manner.

This project will involve elements such as enhancing productivity, developing more effective outpatient and diagnostic pathways, investing in the right areas, etc.







The postholder will have the following key strategic skills and experience further detail is provided in the job description :

Provide strategic analysis and interpret complex datasets to help the ICB / ICS clearly understand trends, challenges and opportunities.

About us

NHS North West London Integrated Care Board is a statutory body responsible for planning and allocating health and care resources to improve the lives of people in eight boroughs across North West London : Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.

The local population is large and diverse, with a wide range of health and care needs that are evolving all the time. Working with our partners including Councils,





NHS provider Trusts, GPs and voluntary and community organisations, we plan and allocate NHS resource to deliver a wide range of services including urgent and emergency care, mental health, primary care, elective hospital services and community care.

Working for us, you can help ensure that our residents and patients have access to the right services when they need them and assist them take greater care of their own health to ensure they live longer, healthier lives.

To do this we will :

improve outcomes in population health and healthcare

reduce inequalities in health outcomes, experience, and access

enhance productivity and better value for money

support broader social and economic development within our area.







Were proud of our staff and the contribution they make and are committed to developing their knowledge and skills in a supportive, inclusive, and values-led organisation.

Job description

Job responsibilities

The post-holder will have the following responsibilities aligned to seven key domains : leadership capabilities; staff development and wellbeing;

programme management and delivery; strategic acumen; health sector knowledge and experience; technical skills; and relationships and stakeholder engagement :

Leadership Capabilities

Develop, present and communicate complex data and modelling to senior ICS stakeholders, the ICB strategy team, ICS programmes, borough-based partnerships, corporate function teams, and other networks across North West London.







Develop and ensure implementation and compliance of data and information strategies to enable the effective functioning of the ICB, in a changing environment, responding to both external and internal pressures.

Provide information and detailed advice to influence organisational policy across different areas such as the ICS strategy, the joint forward plan, programme plans, functional strategies data and digital, and others.

Contribute to the development of a highly effective strategy team that is focused on developing high-quality strategies that support the ICBs and ICS key objectives.

S taff Development and Wellbeing

Support, motivate and inspire team members, and invest time in two-way coaching.







Build effective relationships with colleagues at all levels through open communication and constructive feedback.

Help build a high-performing strategy team that is celebrated in terms of diversity, skill-set, experience, and expertise in the team.

Complete relevant EDI training and also undertake fair and objective recruitment training as appropriate.

Complete statutory and mandatory training required for this specific role, within the mandated timeframe.

Develop and continually refine career development objectives aligned to the responsibilities of the strategy team.

Programme Management and Delivery

Working with the strategy team, the business intelligence team and the programme teams, identify and scope the strategic analytical tools required to support the development of the shared needs assessment, the ICS strategy,





the five-year Joint Forward Plan and the programme plans.

Ensure alignment with the ICBs wider Data and Digital strategy and other ICS information strategies influencing the development of these as appropriate.

Support programmes, borough-based partnerships, corporate functions and other key groups with strategic analysis.

Log work requests in a central BI system to ensure visibility of outstanding requests.

Prioritise tight and often conflicting deadlines with short-term and more involved, highly complex long-term tasks.

Work with relevant leads to develop a suite of KPIs, and associated targets and trajectories to track progress and support the ICS in the delivery of its four objectives.

KPIs should track productivity and value for money, impact on inequalities, care quality and access, and outcomes.

Monitor KPIs and help identify areas for improvement, escalating and identifying improvement initiatives as appropriate.

Manage risks, ensuring that appropriate mitigations are in place and risks escalated as necessary.

Strategic Acumen

Identify and clearly articulate the analytical tasks that need to be completed to build the evidence required to develop each strategy.

Up-skill other teams as required through knowledge sharing.

Formulate clear, concise, and useful insights by collating, critically interrogating, and effectively combining large quantities of quantitative and qualitative information.

Support the financial responsibilities of the ICB through indirect approaches this includes supporting the strategy team in assessing the current value for money of services, assessing the appropriateness and effectiveness of spend across the system, and assessing the impact of potential changes to how money is spent.

Critically interrogate the validity, suitability and limitations of the evidence that is available to support the development of strategies.

Input into business cases with key pieces of analysis - to support investment, contracting and procuring for key services.

Support, as required, on the public consultation process for significant service change, providing input into pre-consultation business cases, decision-making business cases, impact assessments, consultation plans, etc.

Provide specialist advice and guidance and hands-on input where required across a range of strategic analysis areas including, but not limited to :

Demand and capacity modelling

Critically interpreting data, analysis, and other information.

Workforce analysis spans and layers analysis

Operational improvement analysis

Measuring productivity

Benchmarking against statistical neighbours

KPIs, targets and trajectories

Health Sector Knowledge and Experience

The post-holder will be required to inform, guide, directly contribute, or lead the following key activities :

Research & development R&D; by monitoring the performance of current services and understanding areas and drivers of under over-performance.

Understanding the needs of the population and how it links to spend / resource.

Health economics analysis : Estimate the impact of proposed service changes on residents and patients against key health sector domains outcomes, care quality, access, patient experience, value for public monies, etc.

Contribute to the wider population health management agenda, the monitoring of inequalities, and the management of benefits.

Build and maintain a repository of internal and publically available health sector datasets, in collaboration with other BI and analytics-focused colleagues across the ICS.

Be or become a subject matter expert on :

WSIC Whole Systems Integrated Care North West Londons current integrated database.

GP Information Systems including SystmOne.

Acute sector data sets including PbR, SUS, SLAM, ECDS, raw EPR data, theatre and outpatient clinic data, and referrals data.

Patient Level Information Costing (PLICs).

Data held by other provider types including referrals data, contacts data, etc.

Reference datasets such as ICD-10, OPCS, HRG and READ / SNOMED codes.

Population-wide datasets, including Office for National Statistics and Public Health England data.

NHS Model Hospital / Model System and other benchmarking repositories.

Technical Skills

The post-holder is required to complete complex analyses and deliver clear insights to support the key messages in relevant strategies, reports, business case etc. They will need to :

Provide strategic analysis and interpret data to help the ICB / ICS clearly understand trends, challenges and opportunities.

Undertake analysis of highly complex and varied datasets, using advanced statistical techniques in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, specialist statistical software such as R, Stata, Python, specialist simulation software such as Simul8, VBA and SQL programming skills, and other tools

Interrogate highly complex patient activity databases using Access, SQL and VBA.

Undertake ad-hoc analysis of highly complex and varied datasets upon request from the strategy team and other teams, often with little prior warning, under pressure to tight deadlines

Develop analytical tools and templates for developing and delivering strategies.

More specifically, the senior strategy analyst role is required to :

Structure data requests to organisations and teams across North West London.

Design and develop new information collection and reporting systems working with the BI team to ensure data sets can be processed and loaded for analytical use.

Design, develop, deliver and explain forecast models covering activity, demand, capacity, workforce, finance, and health outcomes utilising best practice health economics methodologies.

Design, develop, deliver and explain other key analyses such as travel times, etc.

Analyse and link together complex datasets from multiple sources with often conflicting information.

Structure, build and deliver repeatable, user-friendly models in line with industry best practice, including robust error mitigation and quality assurance methods.

Document analytical methodologies, develop user guides, and deliver training.

Extract data from North West Londons existing databases.

Produce reports with clear, concise and simple insights to suit a range of audiences.

Scope, interpret and plan for analytical requests.

Relationships and Stakeholder Engagement

Work closely with the head of strategy, strategy team members and senior BI colleagues within the ICB and across the ICS to advise on the use of data in decision-making, planning, performance managing and commissioning.

Work closely with the head of strategy and leads of programmes, borough-based partnerships, provider collaboratives, corporate functions, etc.

to co-design and agree analytical products to feed into strategies and other reports.

Develop a coordinated and supportive approach across the various teams to ensure all the strategy work of the ICB and ICS is founded on robust analytical evidence informing and upskilling key stakeholders on the potential analyses and insights that can be developed.

Work corporately to support the organisations strategy, population health and BI functions.

Personal Values

Highly motivated - prioritise, plan for and complete tasks proactively, with minimal supervision.

Passionate about improving healthcare services and outcomes for the residents of NWL.

Promote an open, collaborative, and effective working culture that embraces diversity of thought and debate.

Uphold high standards for quality, accuracy, and clarity of message.

Organisational Values : Inequalities

Ensure strategies, plans and services are developed and provided in a way that provides equal access and care for all our residents.

Promote co-production approaches where residents views actively shape service and care provision and drive measurable transformation for residents.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

- Up-to-date understanding of the NHS, including how its organised, policy developments, and the wider political and financial environment that it operates in.
- Deep understanding of healthcare outcomes and how they are measured, healthcare quality and how it is measured and improved, and healthcare finances and how this works in the NHS.
- Significant experience working with health economics-related activities such as measuring the impact of proposed initiatives on outcomes, care quality, access, patient experience, value for money, etc.
- Strong understanding of the KPIs widely used in the health sector, and ability to develop and track against planned trajectories and targets.
- Strong working knowledge of various healthcare data, including, but not limited to :
- GP Information Systems including SystmOne.
- Acute sector data sets including PbR, SUS, SLAM, ECDS, raw EPR data, theatre and outpatient clinic data, and referrals data.
- Patient Level Information Costing PLICs.
- Data held by other provider types including referrals data, contacts data, etc.
- Reference datasets such as ICD-10, OPCS, HRG and READ / SNOMED codes.
- Population-wide datasets, including Office for National Statistics and Public Health England data.
- NHS Model Hospital / Model System and other benchmarking repositories.
- Strong familiarity with how various health datasets can be combined to deliver clear insights.

Desirable

Significant experience working with the health equity agenda, including working with communities to reduce inequalities.

Programme management and delivery

Essential

- Experience in planning and managing short-term analytical projects, and providing regular updates on progress.
- Experience in responding to ad-hoc analytical requests in a fast-paced environment.

Leadership Capabilities

Essential

- Ability to lead on developing analytical methodologies, with limited guidance and oversight.
- Brings significant credibility in the data and analytics space, at all levels of the ICS and across staff groups and external stakeholders.

Strategic acumen

Essential

- Strong ability to think strategically and see the bigger picture in the context of achieving a particular objective.
- Strong ability to problem solve and formulate hypotheses in relation to a particular question, objective or ambition.
- Significant ability to think creatively about solving a particular problem through own analysis / research.
- Ability to work effectively on a combination of strategic and operational projects and activities.

Technical skills

Essential

- Seen as the go-to person for strategic analysis across the ICS.
- Expert in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, specialist statistical software (such as R, Stata, Python), specialist simulation software (such as Simul8), VBA and SQL programming skills, and other tools.

Proficiency in all listed tools not required, but post-holder should have a breadth of tools in their toolkit, and the willingness and motivation to learn new skills.

- Expert ability to interrogate highly complex patient activity databases using Access, SQL and VBA.
- Strong ability to structure, build and deliver repeatable user-friendly models in line with industry best practice, including robust error mitigation and quality assurance methods.
- Significant ability to analyse complex datasets and produce strategic analyses, such as (but not limited to) benchmarks against peers, forecasts, and analyses of historic trends.
- Strong ability to implement evidence-backed good practice health economic methodologies to measure the impact of proposed initiatives on outcomes, care quality, access, patient experience, value for money, etc.).
- Strong data visualisation skills, with the ability to visually guide the reader to the crux of the analytical message.
- Ability to analyse highly complex issues where both qualitative and quantitative information is derived from a broad array of sources and is often conflicting.
- Strong ability to formulate clear, useful insights by collating, critically interrogating, and effectively combining quantitative and qualitative information.
- Ability to develop written materials that convey complex, technical concepts in a clear, easily-digestible manner to suit a wide range of audiences from residents, to operational staff, to senior healthcare executives.
- Ability to articulate the limitations of data and corresponding analysis.

Desirable

Expertise in using Microsoft PowerPoint and slides to articulate a strategy telling a story through the use of clear key messages and robust evidence to reinforce and support the story.

Qualifications

Essential

Undergraduate degree or equivalent experience in a related field.

Staff development and wellbeing

Essential

- Substantial experience working as part of a team with an analytical focus, and experience sharing knowledge, providing two-way coaching, and up-skilling colleagues outside their immediate team.

▶️ Senior Strategy Analyst
🖊️ North West London Integrated Care Board
📍 London