Leah Biller MSc (Primary Care - 2003)

phone: 07977 262 911

email:

Now working freelance, Leah is anenthusiastic, widely experienced strategic senior manager specialising in healthcare with transferable skills and knowledge for working in the public and private sectors. She is particularly skilled at intervening to implement, review, improve, redesign, rebuild or restructure services, resources and operations.

An excellent communicator with the ability to grow business, develop relationships and instinctively identify and mine important opportunities that add significant value.

Valuable and wide-ranging health senior management experience in general practice, secondary care, primary care in and out of hours, commissioning organisations and health and social care regeneration in local government.

Broad and varied health consultancy experience including project and programme management; interim management;general management;general practice business management; strategy and service development; review and redesign; premises development and commissioning and procurement.

Leah adopts a flexible, facilitative and practical approach to her work in order to obtain superior results through minimising risks and maximising opportunities. She is known to create development and improvement in everything she does. Currently working as a provider, she has a patient-centred ethos and uses robust, inclusive communication to achieve success in day-to-day business as well as in projects of any size and complexity.
After starting her healthcare career as a practice manager, Leah has extensive experience at operational and strategic levels in healthcare in both private and public sector settings. With qualifications in business studies, French and law she worked in City legal firms prior to moving into the NHS where, having accumulated broad and varied operational experience, she secured a high profile post to set up the first GP out of hours co-operative in East London. Over a four year period, working within an acute trust, she secured funding, set up and managed a cost effective and high qualify pan East London primary care service that co-ordinated and supported more than 300 GPs. She was successfully awarded additional mainstream funding resulting in the major improvement in winter health pressures in East London and contributed to the integration of primary and acute care while, at the same time, providing robust recruitment opportunities for GPs that filled many longstanding primary care gaps over a wide area of East London. During this time, Leah was appointed part of a team of external consultants to advise Barking & Havering on the structure and quality of their out of hours services.
Moving away from direct operations management, Leah further developed her skills in project management by achieving the rapid physical and operational set up of a multidisciplinary primary care service for one of the first walk-in centres which, like her previous posts and projects, had a substantial budget that she managed with skill and prudence, always maximising opportunities for cost-effectiveness and realising unforeseen benefits.
With established skills in focused delivery of complex projects on time and in budget and the ability to rapidly develop and apply detailed knowledge, Leah’s career path then led her into the health side of social regeneration. As the primary care lead in an ambitious £56m East London regeneration programme, she was responsible for funding negotiations with health and social care commissioners as well as consulting widely with the statutory, private and voluntary sectors of the local community. During her time with the programme, Leah secured funding and set up a greenfield GP practice, advised on the design and use of community health buildings, developed the stakeholder and future tenant base for those buildings. She also introduced a number of service improvements and achieved sustainable mainstream support and funding streams for all her projects.
In late 2003, Leah was appointed to a new and challenging senior management post with Haringey PCT where she used her experience with people and her established large budget management skills to introduce and implement the new GP contract and to develop primary care services. As part of her role, she established a greenfield GP practice, worked with practices in identifying building solutions to enable service improvements and generally facilitated positively change. She also built and led a team to work across 64 GP practices.
As a strategic healthcare consultant and senior manager between November 2004 and April 2014, Leah used her health skills and experience to:

  • teach primary care staff at QueenMaryCollege, University of London
  • advise Epping and Harlow PCTs extensively on the cost and commissioning of dentistry both in and out of hours, implement the new NHS dental contract and design and implement a primary care out of hours dental service for the whole of West Essex
  • carry out focused work with stakeholders on quality outcomes in primary care in WalthamForest
  • undertake a detailed clinical governance review for City & Hackney Teaching PCT
    develop operational policies for Nations Healthcare for their ISTCs in Burton on Trent and Nottingham
  • review primary care and community drugs services for City & Hackney Teaching PCT
    project manage and deliver the new adult primary care substance misuse service forCity & Hackney Teaching PCT
  • provide interim substance misuse management for City & Hackney Teaching PCT
  • assist in the development of the non-clinical services OBC for Gwent Clinical Futures
  • facilitate the options generation process for the redevelopment of the North West Wales Cancer Treatment Centre
  • project manage the procurement of GP led health centres for PCTs in West Essex and West Kent as recommended by Lord Darzi in 2008
  • develop the service strands to support an estates strategy for Croydon PCT
  • benchmark health services for the Department of Health (Prison Health) in secure children’s homes and secure training centres through primary research
  • develop a primary care strategy for West Sussex PCT
  • review substance misuse services and health assessments for under 18s across the criminal justice pathway for the Department of Health (Prison Health)
  • bid for, acquire, transform and have regional management oversight and responsibility for a number of general practices in the South West, East and South East of England
  • work as a strategic development director in a young, GP led general practice provider organisation at the start of the government’s major outsourcing programme in England
  • completely transform and grow a large, independent 6 partner suburban GMS general practice

Non health related projects include:

  • Communications project management for Hackney Building Schools for the Future including providing interim communications management and operational communications as well as planning and delivering a comprehensive borough wide consultation event
  • Preparation of a detailed communications plan for Manchester Building Schools for the Future based on stakeholder feedback obtained using a facilitated workshop

Spring 2012

Employment history – August 2014 back to July 1980

July 2014 current

Interim management – Morden Hall Medical Centre

Interim management including comprehensive review leading to transformation and modernisation of a large 5 partner teaching and training PMS practice to ensure it is in a strong position in the context of all recent and planned changes in and to general practice

May 2014 current

Strategic review and interim management – Lantern Health CIC

Review of human resources structure in relation to future operations, production of job descriptions and person specifications from bottom to top ensuring each post dovetailed with the other at every level, implementation of new developments in existing structure plus preparation for new services, interim management and organisational support

November 2010 to April 2014

Practice Manager – Rydal Group Practice
Transformation and modernisation of large 6 partner general practice, strategic management for quality and performance improvement, significant business expansion and major service development, design and project management of premises developments, workforce planning, restructure, recruitment and TUPE

July 2009 to October 2010

Associate Director – Malling Health

Strategic management, project implementation and development, regional management and business development for a highly successful, young GP led organisation covering large parts of England

November 2004 to June 2009

Associate Director – Mace

Strategic healthcare consultant providing a wide service offer to a continuously growing client base having built a large healthcare consultancy team across the UK

October 2003 to October 2004

Assistant Director of Primary Care Development – Haringey Teaching PCT

July 2000 to September 2003

Primary Care Lead – West Ham & Plaistow New Deal for Communities

January 2000 to June 2000

Walk in Centre Project Manager (6 month contract)– Tower Hamlets Healthcare Trust

November 1995 to January 2000

General Manager – Tower Hamlets Emergency Doctors on Call (THEDOC)

October 1994 to October 1995

Executive Assistant to Pam Hibbs, Chief Nurse/Director of Quality – Barts & The London NHS Trust (post merger of three NHS trusts)

September 1993 to September 1994

Personal Assistant to Prof Michael Besser, Chief Executive – Barts NHS Group

November 1985 to August 1993

Practice Manager – Seven Kings Health Centre

July 1980 to October 1984

Senior legal secretary progressing to legal executive – always working at senior partner level

Maislish & Co, Birkbeck Montagu’s and Linklaters & Paines

Page 1 of 4