Digital Discharge Service (DDS) Digital Care Navigator (Band 5)
Focus: Clinical triage, pathway coordination, leadership, decision‑making
Responsible to
DDS Clinical Lead
Role Purpose
The Digital Care Navigator provides senior clinical-operational coordination and assurance for the Digital Discharge Service (DDS). The role is responsible for end-to-end oversight of referrals, clinical and functional triage, pathway allocation, escalation management and partner coordination to enable safe, timely discharge or admission avoidance.
The postholder acts as the central decision-making and escalation point, ensuring all actions across the DDS pathway are completed, risks are managed and appropriate support is in place for every patient.
Key Responsibilities
Referral Triage & Pathway Leadership
- Lead end-to-end coordination of DDS referrals, including prioritisation and allocation in line with service criteria.
- Undertake clinical and functional triage to assess suitability for technology-enabled discharge or admission avoidance.
- Determine and authorise appropriate DDS pathways and technology solutions based on patient need, risk and context.
Multi-agency Coordination
- Work collaboratively with acute teams, discharge services, therapy teams, social care, reablement and community providers to identify and coordinate suitable DDS referrals.
- Liaise with third-party technology, monitoring and service partners to ensure timely delivery and completion of pathway actions.
- Hold oversight of responsibilities, timescales and dependencies across the pathway.
Escalation, Risk & Safeguarding
- Act as the single escalation point for clinical, operational, technological or safeguarding concerns.
- Ensure risks are identified, mitigated and escalated in line with governance and safeguarding procedures.
- Provide senior oversight to ensure no patient is discharged or managed without appropriate support in place.
End-of-pathway Decision-making
- Lead decisions relating to pathway completion, step-down to ongoing services, continuation of monitoring or transition to self-managed/self-funded models.
- Support admission avoidance decision-making where DDS can safely replace traditional models of care.
Workforce Support & Practice Development
- Provide leadership, guidance and coaching to TED Support Officers and wider MDT colleagues.
- Support embedding of technology-first approaches within discharge, assessment and care planning processes.
- Contribute to training, pathway refinement and best-practice dissemination.
Governance, Data & Assurance
- Provide assurance reporting to WM5G / commissioners on referral activity, outcomes, risks and benefits realisation.
- Use data and insight to identify trends, capacity pressures and pathway improvements.
- Contribute to service improvement, clinical safety reviews and pathway development.
Key Boundaries
- The role does not routinely deliver equipment or undertake day-to-day setup, unless required for escalation or complex cases.
- Focus is on leadership, coordination, assurance and decision-making across the DDS pathway.
Core Skills & Attributes
- Demonstrated experience working in health, social care, or discharge settings, ideally in roles related to hospital discharge, community support, or reablement.
- Strong understanding of discharge pathways including Virtual Wards, Pathways 0/1, Discharge to Assess, and social care interventions.
- Experience supporting or delivering care in a community-based model using assistive technologies, TEC or remote monitoring.
- Comfortable working across multidisciplinary teams including hospital, local authority, and third-sector stakeholders.
- Proven track record supporting patients and professionals through digital transformation or service redesign.
- Minimum 3 years’ experience working within discharge services in either acute or community services
- Strong organisational and coordination skills
- Minimum 3 years’ experience in patient facing roles
- Confident communicator with patients, carers and multidisciplinary teams.
- Comfortable working in fast-paced, ward-based environments.
- Attention to detail and commitment to accurate documentation.
- Ability to identify issues early and escalate appropriately.
- Experience working within a clinically regulated service
- Adept at data capture and management reporting
Skills
- Highly proficient within Health and Social Care settings.
- Have an interest and knowledge of technology that can be used to improve health and social care.
- Skilled in navigating discharge workflows and cross-sector care transitions.
- Able to engage both clinical and social care professionals with confidence and credibility.
- Strong coordination, communication, and tech adoption skills — capable of unblocking operational issues quickly.
- Ability to balance user-centred empathy with pathway efficiency and service goals.
- Strong influence and persuasion skills, re-enforced by persistence and resilience.
- Excellent verbal, written and presentation skills, preparing and delivering effective communications.
- Exhibit a high degree of pro-activity and creative thinking when faced with challenges requiring resolution.
- Effective self-starter able to work on own initiative to tight deadlines where there are often conflicting requirements and requests for support from other parts of the team.
Qualifications
- NVQ Level 4 in Health and Social Care or equivalent qualification
- Relevant professional qualification or significant relevant professional experience.