Purchasing and Contracts Manager

Responsible for ordering pharmaceutical products, monitoring of pharmaceutical stock problems/ shortages, managing & updating national, regional, and local contracts. To purchase routine and emergency supplies of pharmaceutical products ensuring stock levels are sufficient to meet the needs of our users.
To report on supply status and interruption of resupply timeframes, processing off-contract claims when contracted brands are not available, recommending strategies to mitigate the impact such as available licensed or unlicensed alternatives.

Working for our organisation
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust provides NHS hospital services for around 900,000 people across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.
As well as delivering excellent general hospital services to local people, we provide specialist heart attack, vascular, stroke, spinal, cystic fibrosis and plastic surgery services across a much wider area.
We have three main hospitals - Frimley Park in Frimley near Camberley, Heatherwood in Ascot and Wexham Park near Slough.
Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other, Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.
We are also proud to host the Defence Medical Group South East at Frimley Park with military surgical, medical and nursing personnel working alongside the hospital's NHS staff providing care to patients in all specialties, · To research and advise of short- and long-term changes regarding drug supply and manage irregular supply of drugs keeping communication current to maximise best outcome.
· To adopt appropriate purchasing strategies to prevent the risk of delayed delivery and delayed patient care.
· To be responsible for accurately inputting information into computer systems, spreadsheets, and databases, processing the information, accessing reports and patient database for patient details.
· Under the guidance of the Purchasing Manager, liaise with suppliers and CMU about contractual details.
· To maintain various logs & records of data, such as transport and off-contract claims log.
· To plan and organise emergency deliveries and ensure the correct paperwork is completed and sent to the appropriate teams to ensure payment.
· To liaise with Finance & Contracts Department with respect to invoicing when appropriate.
· To investigate and decide appropriate corrective action to ensure the Trust receive adequate re-imbursement when discrepancies occur, whilst maintaining good working relations.
· To attend and participate in relevant internal and external meetings where sensitive contractual matters are discussed, building networks with external procurement leads to increase support available to the Trust.
· To develop and update procurement standard operating procedures and contribute to the development of the service to improve patient care.
· To provide induction, training, and education to other staff members on specific activities within your area of speciality offering support and direction and setting clear goals and objectives.
· To process orders through the computer system in accordance with purchasing agreements to ensure that stock levels are sufficient to maintain high service levels within agreed standards. Efficiency and accuracy need to be observed to meet deadlines and negate treatment delay or patient harm.
· To initiate the drug alert process to prevent harmful medicines from getting to patients cascading the information within Pharmacy and arranging appropriate actions for any affected stock and notifying third parties as required.
· To participate in the recruitment of employees.
· To deputise for the purchasing manager as required.
· To ensure all paperwork is processed, submitted, and stored within the required timescales and to departmental standards and in accordance with legal requirements.
· To perform or support any internal and external audits within procurement as required.
· Acting as a role model in a professional and courteous manner.
· To carry out any other duties as reasonably requested by the purchasing manager and pharmacy managers.
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (FHFT) has an outstanding reputation and a proud record of achievement. As a well performing, well led and ambitious Foundation Trust, we have exciting times ahead of us. We have an ongoing commitment to improving the health and care services for the 900,000 people we serve across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.
We are proud of the ambitions laid out in our strategy, Our Future FHFT, including our vision to be a leader in health & wellbeing, delivering excellence for our communities.
We continue to invest in our services and facilities, including a £10 million upgrade to the hospital maternity unit as well as £49m major new Emergency Assessment Centre on our Wexham Park site. The opening of a brand new £100m state of the art hospital which replaced the existing hospital facility at Heatherwood and are planning to invest further in diagnostics and inpatient capacity at Frimley Park.
We have also made significant investment in our quality improvement and digital programmes to support our vision and we will ensure that we achieve our aim of providing the highest quality healthcare to our patients. Our new EPR - Epic - went live in June and we are already beginning to reap the benefits of this ambitious investment.
Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other, Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.

We have an exciting new opportunity for a committed and motivated person with excellent organisational skills to work within our procurement team.