Stephen Clinton
Senior leader in healthcare operations with strong technical and reporting skills
25+
Years' experience
7
Organisations
15
Roles
Places I've worked
Experienced operational and technology professional with more than 25 years' experience delivering service improvement, organisational change, technology implementation and operational reporting within complex, high-pressure environments.
Combines extensive operational leadership experience with strong technical capability, enabling effective collaboration between frontline users, technical teams, suppliers and senior stakeholders. Experienced in understanding business requirements, translating operational needs into practical solutions and ensuring systems, processes and reporting deliver measurable value to organisations and their customers.
Has led major technology programmes, implemented new operational systems, developed reporting and analytics solutions, and supported organisations through significant periods of growth and change. Recognised for building strong stakeholder relationships, understanding complex business processes and applying data and technology to improve performance, efficiency and user experience.
Particular strengths include stakeholder engagement, business process analysis, operational performance, technology implementation, data interpretation, problem solving and communicating complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Professional Experience
Maple Leaf Intelligence
Contracts include a large UK Emergency Ambulance Service and volunteer work for the Canadian Workplace Wellbeing Awards.
Jul 2024Present
Contract Power BI Developer / Analytics Engineer
Contract Power BI Developer / Analytics Engineer
Responsibilities
- Delivering operational reports and dashboards for organisations
- Strong SQL skills for efficient data modelling
- Excellent stakeholder engagement for impactful reports
- Open, flexible approach to work well within existing teams
- Two key contracts: a large EMS organisation responsible for 999 and 111 service delivery, and a Canadian organisation promoting wellbeing in the workplace
Key Achievements
- Developed reports and dashboards focused on operational performance, patient experience and service delivery
- Worked closely with operational users, managers and technical teams to understand reporting requirements and translate them into practical dashboard and data solutions
- Near-real-time patient demand dashboard used by clinicians actively monitoring and managing waiting patient assessments
- Percentile-based KPI reports of significant measures related to patient experience and safety, used internally and in government submissions
- Resource utilisation reports for key volunteer resources where the method of activity capture was thought unavailable
- Call flow analyses via reports which allowed for streamlining of patient flow, reducing response times
- Telephony demand and Agent Activity reports which replaced an expensive third-party option which wasn't delivering
- Enhanced the reports with new SQL procedures, views and tables, creating new pipelines where none existed for that data
- Developed a new telephony data model from switchboard source tables which became the basis for all 999 and 111 telephony reporting
- Developed a new pivot methodology for managing thousands of questionnaire responses by episode, enabling reporting which had previously not been possible
- Developed a more accurate method of identifying case activity while waiting for a response, enabling performance reporting and visibility of patient experience
Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust
NHS trust running Wales' 999 emergency ambulance service and NHS 111 Wales — the country's non-emergency urgent care telephone and remote clinical assessment service.
Integrated Care (2021–2024)
Consisted of the 111 Operation and 999 Remote Clinical Assessment. Over 1 million incoming 111 calls were handled per year and remote assessments provided to 300,000 111 patients and 70,000 999 patients with 190 Call Handlers and 200 Remote Clinicians operating from 180 seats across 6 main contact centres and 4 spoke sites. The leadership team consisted of Head of Service, 4 Service Managers and 9 Regional Managers.
1m+
111 calls / yr
300,000
111 patients assessed
70,000
999 patients assessed
190
Call handlers
200
Remote clinicians
6 + 4
Main / spoke sites
Clinical Contact Centres and Resourcing (2017–2021)
Handled and coordinated the response to 365,000 999 calls and 400,000 111 calls per year (in 2017), with 200 Call Handlers and 120 Remote Clinicians operating from 160 seats across 5 contact centres. The leadership team was 2 Heads of Service, 7 Service Managers and 6 Regional Managers. The Resourcing Team planned shifts across all 3,000 staff including EMS, Patient Transport and Contact Centre Operations, with 1 Regional Manager, 3 Supervisors and 24 staff across 3 national resource centres.
365,000
999 calls / yr
400,000
111 calls / yr
200
Call handlers
120
Remote clinicians
5
Contact centres
3,000
Staff resourced
20212024
Assistant Director of Operations, Integrated Care
Assistant Director of Operations, Integrated Care
Based at
Responsibilities
- Senior operational leadership role within a high-volume, complex contact centre environment
- Shaping data, technology and system implementation alongside core operational responsibilities
Key Achievements
- Project Director for the replacement Patient Management System for NHS 111 Wales following the failure of the national programme. Led the procurement, development, testing, installation, reporting requirements and go-live within 8 months start to finish, on time and on budget, including the decommissioning and safe data transfer of the old system. Required significant stakeholder management of competitive vendors, commissioners and health board partners
- Worked with operational teams, clinicians, commissioners, suppliers and technical teams to define system behaviour, workflows, reporting requirements and performance measures, ensuring the new system reflected how the service actually operated
- Acted as the operational authority for system design decisions, validating functionality, resolving process questions and ensuring alignment between operational practice, reporting requirements and technical implementation
- Defined KPI logic and data standards, including demand modelling and clinical outcome metrics, to ensure consistent operational reporting and decision-making, driving alignment between system requirements, operational needs, and reporting standards
- Operational lead on renovation of the southeast contact centre, managing links with all staff working in centre and different contact centre leads to organise across all areas. Designed the layouts with the architects to optimise contact centre capacity while retaining an optimised work environment for all staff and supervisors on site
- Operational lead on new 80-seat north contact centre, writing internal business case and working with architects on design and layout to optimise contact centre capacity while retaining an optimised work environment for all staff and supervisors on site
- Used QlikView to create new telephony and PMS reports to better visualise the operation, filling a gap where these reports did not exist or were inaccurate. Used in demand analysis calculations for the 111 expansion to measure staffing requirements
- Developed multiple Qlik and Power BI reports to improve visibility of the operation and predict future operations, including: a disaster-recovery text feed with a stored procedure showing live calls pending on the 111 queues (up to 5 minutes behind, but the first ever metrics for waiting patients 111 ever had); a previously unused field discovered to measure when a clinician started triage, improving accuracy of clinical call count and triage start time (performance reporting accuracy improved and actual performance rose 15%); a 168-hour-per-week heatmap for resource planning with multi-week selection and automatic averaging; a new dashboard for a key clinical contact-centre metric reported daily to commissioners; and individual clinician reports comparing call times and case completion, never built before as they required additional data-warehouse linkages and interpretation of telephony metrics
20172021
Assistant Director of Operations, Clinical Contact Centres and Resourcing
Assistant Director of Operations, Clinical Contact Centres and Resourcing
Based at
Responsibilities
- Senior operational leadership role within a high-volume, complex contact centre environment
- Shaping data, technology and system implementation alongside core operational responsibilities
- On-call Gold strategic commander for the delivery of the ambulance service and civil contingencies response to major incidents
- Responsible for workforce planning across more than 3,000 staff covering Emergency Medical Services, Patient Transport Services and Clinical Contact Centres
Key Achievements
- Operational lead on expansion of 111 services across Wales, readying the organisation for roll-out and increasing service capacity six-fold over 2 years as Health Board partners came on board with the expanded services offered. Required extensive collaboration with commissioners and health board partners
- Led during the pandemic, standing up a 100% increase in operational capacity and overseeing an additional 60- and 50-seat contact centre
- Re-rostered emergency and urgent care contact centre staff to better align resources with demand, improving call-answering performance and reducing periods of over- and under-staffing
- Developed new reporting and forecasting tools to improve understanding of demand, staffing requirements and operational performance across contact centre operations
- Introduced Erlang C to resourcing and built spreadsheets to manage resource and use existing demand to forecast contact centre staffing levels — particularly key during the 111 expansion to predict required staffing levels, used in budget planning by the trust and commissioners, and presented at a local reporting conference to showcase the benefits of Erlang C prediction in contact centres
- Completed the installation of the new CAD system from a project that was almost complete on arrival
- Restructured the team delivering the 999 and 111 services
- Led the Trust Resource Policy Group, working with trade unions, managers and staff representatives to redesign resource policies and improve workforce planning arrangements
- As Strategic Commander, chaired the Daily Performance Meeting of mainly Health Board colleagues, coordinating updates on the current situation and facilitating discussions on collaborative solutions
Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
Provincial ministry responsible for emergency health services across Ontario. Responding to 1.3m verified incidents for a population of 13.6m over 416,000 square miles, dispatch operates or governs 23 ground and air control rooms with 180 live seats in total, employing 900 EMDs and 50 managers.
1.3m
Incidents / yr
13.6m
Population served
416,000 mi²
Area covered
23
Control rooms
900
EMDs
Sep 2014Dec 2016
Consultant / Programme Manager, Dispatch Technology Projects
Consultant / Programme Manager, Dispatch Technology Projects
Responsibilities
- Programme Manager for dispatch technology projects including CAD upgrades, reporting improvements and a review of medical triage
- Advisor to Emergency Health Services Ministry on dispatch operations and strategy, including the introduction of MPDS triage into Ontario
Key Achievements
- Advised Emergency Health Services leadership on the operational impact of technology and policy decisions, helping shape the future direction of dispatch operations
- Reduced installation time and costs of key technology projects including CAD upgrades, wide area networks and radio communications, saving around £0.5m
- Acted as the link between Emergency Health Services, operational dispatch leaders, technology teams and suppliers, ensuring operational requirements were understood and reflected in system design and implementation plans
- Reviewed data analysis of operations and fixed reports and corrected errors which had been in place for some time, such as identification of activity in Northern Ontario by grid reference rather than the existing locality
- Facilitated workshops with operational leaders, front-line teams, technical specialists and vendors to define requirements and priorities for CAD modernisation across the province
- Reviewed operational reporting and system outputs to ensure performance measures accurately reflected service delivery for accurate provincial decision-making
- Supported strategic planning for the introduction of MPDS triage across a province serving 13.6 million residents
British Columbia Ambulance Service
Responding to 500,000 verified incidents for a population of 4.3m over 366,000 square miles. Dispatch operates 3 ground and air control rooms with 60 live seats in total, employing 250 EMDs and 12 managers, with a budget of £15 million.
500,000
Incidents / yr
4.3m
Population served
366,000 mi²
Area covered
3
Control rooms
250
EMDs
£15m
Budget
20102014
Executive Director of Operations, Service Delivery
Executive Director of Operations, Service Delivery
Based at
Responsibilities
- Leader of one of the largest ambulance dispatch operations in North America
- Delivery of all emergency and routine, air and ground call handling and dispatching, including long-distance transport planning for critical patients by air and ground
- Responsible for the mobile Operations Duty Manager team across the province
- Gold Commander on call, deputising for the Chief Operating Officer in their absence
Key Achievements
- Consolidated emergency dispatch operations from 4 centres into 3, further improving call handling procedures between centres and air and ground operations
- Introduced balanced shift patterns using industry-standard planning, increasing resource levels and performance against targets while avoiding a £0.5m per year increase in staff costs
- Presented sessions at industry conferences on control room leadership, staff engagement and technology topics
- Planned and executed the successful transition of three independent dispatch centres into a single provincial entity with standardised management and service delivery processes
- Led the new Dispatch Operations to achieve Accredited Centre of Excellence status in MPDS telephone triage, improving MPDS call-handling quality from 45% to 95% — the largest multi-site operation with this level of excellence in patient care in Canada
- Demonstrated patient-focused leadership through a supportive and encouraging environment, including restructuring the management team to focus at the organisational level while providing local support for all centres
- Designed and built the new dispatch operations centre on Vancouver Island, a lease-purchase worth $5 million — prepared the business case, influenced leadership to invest, and worked with employees and colleagues to ensure a successful design; a one-of-a-kind facility also equipped to share space with local Fire and Police agencies for normal or business-continuity operations
- Designed and built a major renovation to the Kamloops dispatch centre, converting it from a temporary building to a fit-for-purpose centre on a $750,000 budget; prepared the business case and led the tender, selection and purchase of standard workstation consoles for all centres at a cost of $1.2 million, equipping every centre to the same high standard
- Led renovations to the Vancouver HQ to update the layout and design of a large portion of HQ to accommodate the incoming Patient Transfer Network (PTN) and its merger with the dispatch operations floor
20072010
Director of Vancouver Dispatch Operations Centre
Director of Vancouver Dispatch Operations Centre
Based at
Responsibilities
- Delivery of emergency and routine call handling and dispatch in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver
- Lead role in standardising operations across all provincial dispatch centres
Key Achievements
- Turned around a toxic work environment, creating a new, strong culture of professional leaders and staff focused on patient care and the well-being of each other
- Led staff through 9 months of industrial action in an environment with significant labour issues, successfully ensuring full staffing with no decrease in service levels
- Led dispatch planning for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, requiring strong communication with external agencies
- Restructured dispatch recruitment, providing more information to candidates, structured tests and interview questions and strict marking criteria to ensure new hires were a fit for the role
- Restructured dispatch training, bringing it in-house from clinical education to a newly formed dispatch education unit, introducing lesson planning, permanent instructors, integrated modular courses and clear milestones and feedback — dispatch training success rate rose from 35% to 90%
- Reduced employee turnover by approximately 75% through cultural transformation, leadership restructuring and improved staff engagement
- Designed and implemented new business information systems to show real-time performance information in the dispatch centres, in daily performance reports, and in public spaces including the BCAS website
- Drove changes to service delivery using metrics, decreasing average speed to answer and call handling times, reducing triage times and improving accuracy of scheduled pickup and drop-off times for patient transfers
- Introduced occupancy information for all dispatch operations centres to provide balanced workloads for staff and effective management of staffing levels, reducing operating costs
- Introduced deployment planning to the organisation, using data to determine the correct location for available response units based on call predictability — the first of its kind successfully implemented in the service
- Led the improvement of call triage by ensuring adherence to the Medical Priority Dispatch System, helping staff improve triage performance to the level of an Accredited Centre of Excellence
- Introduced cultural change to improve interpersonal relations and centre working conditions, working with staff groups and unions to identify issues and act on feedback and observation
- Took over as Project Director for a failing CAD upgrade on arrival, previously spanning multiple years with no progress — turned around the project, updated the design and functionality to align with a new vision of dispatch, repaired vendor relations through negotiation of features and functionality, and led the installation across all centres
- Project Director for procurement, configuration and installation of Mobile Data into ambulances across the province on a strict installation schedule, with design and development of training packages and remote delivery to 3,000 paramedics across BC and 250 dispatchers in three dispatch centres — delivered on time and on budget
- Restructured centre management and supervision to provide clearer communication pathways in both directions, providing education at all levels for managers and supervisors
- Introduced Insights Discovery team-building for dispatch staff to promote better working relationships, since adopted across all areas of BCAS and absorbed into the language and culture of the organisation
- Led the dispatch operation through its most significant employment dispute, an 8-month strike by all paramedic and dispatch staff, working with staff and union groups to maintain positive relations and ensure all patient needs were met throughout
Independent CAD Vendor
Jul 2007
Dispatch and CAD Consultant
Dispatch and CAD Consultant
Responsibilities
- Provided expertise to a new CAD company, influencing their design and build of a new, innovative CAD system aimed at simplifying the dispatch process and improving communications to field personnel
South Central Ambulance NHS Trust
Formed in 2006 when Oxfordshire Ambulance NHS Trust merged with neighbouring services to become South Central Ambulance Service. Six roles of increasing responsibility across control room operations, resourcing and technology, spanning the trust before and after the merger.
20062007
Divisional Head of Control (SCAS)
Divisional Head of Control (SCAS)
Responsibilities
- Following the merger into South Central Ambulance Service
- Delivery of all emergency and routine call handling and dispatch operations for Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire
- Silver Commander on call and responding officer for serious and major incidents
Key Achievements
- Combined the management and leadership of two geographically diverse dispatch centres in Oxford and Milton Keynes after the ambulance service merger, slimming and reorganising the management team and merging best practice across the dispatch centres — including de-merging one area to move to another merged service
20042006
Assistant Director Emergency Operations, Control and Resourcing (OAS)
Assistant Director Emergency Operations, Control and Resourcing (OAS)
About the service
60,000 verified incidents per year for a population of 630,000, over 1,000 square miles. Operated from a single dispatch centre with 5 seats, employing 30 EMDs and 6 managers, based across Thame Ambulance Station, Oxford HQ and Oxford Emergency Operations Centre.
60,000
Incidents / yr
630,000
Population served
1,000 mi²
Area covered
30
EMDs
Responsibilities
- Delivery of all emergency and routine call handling and dispatch operations for Oxfordshire
- Head of Central Resource, managing paramedic and dispatcher scheduling
- Silver Commander on call and responding officer for serious and major incidents
Key Achievements
- Led the introduction of innovative response policies including secondary telephone triage in the control room using paramedics and local doctors to reduce ambulance responses
- Project Manager replacing the dispatch CAD including information management reporting and IT infrastructure changes; negotiated a zero-cost upgrade to the latest CAD as part of a trial for an electronic patient care record offering with a mobile data partner, coordinating two vendors and receiving a highly rated review from the National Audit Office
- Selected, procured and installed new commercial-off-the-shelf scheduling software (PROMIS) for Central Resource, and led the change management process, new procedures and data integrity of the change
- Led demand analysis for the trust — gathering data, performing calculations and predicting future staffing requirements, influencing the trust's estates strategy
- Led and project-managed the introduction of new MIS C3 dispatch software and MIS PTS into the Oxfordshire control rooms
- Project Director for the successful improvement of call-taker triage to achieve an ACE Accredited Centre status by the IAED, leading the team that project-managed the application and improvements to triage, ensuring integration with training, education, policy and procedure
- Created and introduced new shift patterns for paramedics and dispatchers meeting the Working Time Directive while balancing working hours and overall crew availability
- Created and introduced new meal-break procedures giving all crews an off-duty break without impacting availability or performance, negotiating with trade unions to ensure correct implementation with dispatch teams
- Automated scheduling and operational information for the Central Resourcing Department using complex spreadsheets — mastering MS Excel, MS Access and an introduction to MS SQL Server, reducing paper-based processes, increasing shared information about shifts, and saving the cost of an additional staff member
- Designed and formatted a new major-incident process and procedure manual and ambulance package for use at real and training incidents, refined through user testing, evaluation and personal usage experience as a responding scene commander
20032004
Information and Technology Lead
Information and Technology Lead
Responsibilities
- Following a written proposal outlining areas for improvement and proposed solutions, seconded to IMT for one year
- Led strategies supporting existing staff on improvements to infrastructure and reporting within the organisation
- Bronze Commander on call, actively responding to serious and major incidents
Key Achievements
- Led the project to install new server infrastructure to cope with new demands from the Department of Health for Call Connect measurement — secured local authority funding, negotiated with vendors, procured servers and led the installation, configuring all servers and PCs while ensuring continuity of service
- Secured one-time funding from the local Health Authority to update server and workstation infrastructure, procuring, installing and configuring all servers and workstations for the organisation
- Designed and implemented a new management information system and suite of reporting tools for more accurate operational performance reporting, including KA34, real-time and daily performance reports for the operations management team, built on MS Access and MS SQL Server
- Designed and coded electronic MS Excel-based timesheets for all staff, enabling electronic submission — reducing effort and paperwork in finance and scheduling by two-thirds and increasing accuracy, saving the organisation money in payroll errors
- Designed and coded an automated MS Access-based book-off and illness/injury tracking module for the resourcing system, linked via MS SQL Server to scheduling and timesheet databases for more efficient tracking of employee time
20002003
Dispatch Duty Manager
Dispatch Duty Manager
Responsibilities
- On-duty responsibility for service delivery, call receipt and dispatch response to 999 and urgent calls
- Bronze Commander on call and actively responding officer to serious and major incidents
Key Achievements
- Designed and implemented a new classroom-based EMD course for existing and new staff, including new policy and procedure and planning and delivering training — improved new-hire success rate, reduced induction from 4 to 2 weeks and reduced variation from procedure across the operation
- Secured formal training for all instructors to ensure quality of delivery
19992000
Station Officer / Lead Paramedic
Station Officer / Lead Paramedic
Responsibilities
- Active paramedic responder with responsibility for leading an ambulance station
Key Achievements
- Reorganised and renovated the crew areas of the station
- Created a new station manual for all staff identifying relevant policies and procedures and new filing systems, later adopted across all stations in the service
19982000
Paramedic
Paramedic
Responsibilities
- Front-line paramedic responder for Oxfordshire Ambulance NHS Trust
Welsh Ambulance Services
Front-line career start with the Welsh Ambulance Service, based at New Quay Station on the West Wales coast, progressing from Emergency Medical Technician to Paramedic.
19961998
Paramedic
Paramedic
Key Achievements
- Led the introduction of new shift patterns in the station
- Qualified in Pre-Hospital Advanced Life Support (1996) and Emergency Obstetrics (1997)
- Edited, published and sold training manuals for a national ambulance union during off-duty time — editing and proof-reading the completed textbooks, compiling them electronically for publishing, working with a local printer, and producing marketing, order-taking, fulfilment and distribution to customers
19941996
Emergency Medical Technician
Emergency Medical Technician
Key Achievements
- Started a successful local fundraising campaign for station equipment
Education & Professional Designations
Education
- MS Data Analyst Associate2024
- MS Excel Expert2024
- LEAN Leadership (PHSA)2012
- Strategic Management (TVSHA)2006
- Prince2 Practitioner2003, 2017
- MBA (Oxford Brookes)2004
- HPC Paramedic1996
Professional Designations
- Member, Association of Professional Health Analytics (APHA)
- Former Member, Paramedic Chiefs of Canada
- Former Member, British Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO)