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
My own company providing a contracted reporting and analytics resource to NHS Ambulance Services and other organisations.
PresentJul 2024
Contract Analytics Engineer / Report Developer
Contract Analytics Engineer / Report Developer
Self-employed contractor supporting NHS Ambulance Services and other organisations with operational reporting utilising detailed knowledge of NHS ambulance operations.
Responsibilities
- Create and deliver meaningful, accurate reports and dashboards for the organisation on significant, impactful topics
- Research and analyse business operations and other information to provide meaningful insights used to take action
Skills
- SQL engineering for data extraction and modelling to ensure the accuracy of the reports and analysis
- Power BI development to create accurate and effective visual reports
- Presentation and communication to effectively communicate the content of the reports or analyses
- Stakeholder management to work closely with the organisation's teams and existing informatics staff and present findings to senior leaders
Key Achievements
- Real-time patient waiting dashboard for clinicians to manage patient flow through remote patient assessment services
- Volunteer resource utilisation reports to show response activity for this staff group
- 999 and 111 telephony demand reports to manage patient flow, staffing levels, and budget setting — included rewriting the telephony interface
- Agent activity reports to manage staffing activity and improve response times and patient flow in 111 and 999 response
- Patient care analysis allowing operations to improve flow in remote patient assessments
Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust
NHS Trust responsible for the emergency 999 service, urgent and routine ambulance transport, and the nation’s 111 call handling and triage service. In 2024 the Trust triaged 365,000 999 callers and 1 million 111 callers, and remotely clinically assessed 370,000 patients from 4 Clinical Contact Centres in North, Mid and South Wales.
20242021
Assistant Director of Operations, Integrated Care
Assistant Director of Operations, Integrated Care
Delivery of a newly formed division of operations responsible for the expanded call handling and non-clinical triage in 111 and remote clinical assessment of 999 and 111 callers. Employed a team of 380 staff and held a budget of £15 million. Other specific responsibilities included Project Director for a new call handling and patient management system for 111, Strategic (Gold) Commander on call and deputising for the Director of Operations in their absence.
Key Achievements
- Led the replacement of the 111 call handling and patient management system from specification to go-live within 8 months, involving significant stakeholder management of competitive vendors, commissioners and health partners to deliver the product after the failure of a national procurement programme
- Leading staff through weeks of industrial action
- Further increased the volume of remote clinical assessments, successfully finding alternative care for 15% of 999 callers through expansion of the service
- Finalised the expansion of the 111 service to the remaining health boards, increasing call volume by 150,000 patients per year
20212017
Assistant Director of Operations, Clinical Contact Centres and Resourcing
Assistant Director of Operations, Clinical Contact Centres and Resourcing
Delivery of a division of operations responsible for all 999 and 111 call handling, non-clinical triage and remote clinical assessment services and the scheduling and resourcing of all front-line staff. Employed a team of 300 staff and held a budget of £13 million. Other specific responsibilities included being the operational lead for the expansion of the 111 service, Chair of the Divisional Local Pandemic Response team, Strategic (Gold) Commander on call and deputising for the Director of Operations in their absence.
Key Achievements
- Doubled the numbers of patients finding alternative care through expansion of the remote clinical assessment service, from 5% of 999 callers to 10%
- Successfully increased the volumes of 111 calls handled with non-clinical triage from 250,000 to 850,000 patients per year, with gradual staffing increases and an increasing estate footprint
- Positively impacted the GP out-of-hours service by increasing the numbers of patients resolved through remote clinical assessment
- Led the division through the pandemic period, increasing 111 call handling capacity by 100%
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
20162014
Dispatch Operations Consultant / Senior Project Manager
Dispatch Operations Consultant / Senior Project Manager
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
20142010
Executive Director of Dispatch Operations
Executive Director of Dispatch Operations
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
20102007
Director of Dispatch Operations, Vancouver
Director of Dispatch Operations, Vancouver
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
2007
Dispatch Operations Consultant
Dispatch Operations 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. Five roles of increasing responsibility across control room operations, resourcing and technology, spanning the trust before and after the merger.
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
Based at
20072004
Assistant Director of Operations, Dispatch Operations Centres and Resourcing
Assistant Director of Operations, Dispatch Operations Centres and Resourcing
Responsible for all dispatch operations across Oxfordshire region. When OAS merged into South Central AS this role expanded to add the Two Shires areas and became a regional role alongside colleagues for Berkshire and Hampshire.
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
- Following the merger into South Central Ambulance Service
- Delivery of all emergency and routine call handling and dispatch operations for Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire
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
- 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
20042003
Dispatch Technology and Reporting Analyst
Dispatch Technology and Reporting Analyst
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
20032000
Duty Manager, Dispatch Operations Centre
Duty Manager, Dispatch Operations Centre
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
20001999
Paramedic Station Supervisor
Paramedic Station Supervisor
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
20001998
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.
19981996
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
19961994
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)