DEPUTY COUNTRY MEDICAL DIRECTOR (DCMD)

Job Description:

Africa Healthcare Network (AHN) is building the first dialysis chain across East Africa, providing high-quality, life-saving dialysis at an affordable cost to both the local patient population and patients from neighboring countries, which do not have centers of their own. AHN brings world-class technical expertise combined with developing world practical operating experience to a region in dire need of quality dialysis treatment. In North America, over 97% of patients requiring treatment for kidney disease receive care; in East Africa, less than 5% receive care. AHN's goal is to increase access to high quality care at a lower cost to patients, delivered through a sustainable business model. AHN is currently operating in Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and will be expanding to West Africa.

AHN Kenya is looking for a Deputy Country Medical Director (DCMD) to assist the Country Medical Director in managing our Kenya clinical operations. The DCMD will be required to take a lead role in developing links between the Medical Director’s office and the wider organization, including partner hospitals in respect of clinical standards and governance. He/she will also engage collaboratively with the medical consultants (inclusive of superintending Nephrologist), CMD and CMO in providing updates, reports or handover where required.

The role of the Deputy Country Medical Director is to provide clinical leadership and oversight of all the dialysis units across the country, and report to the Country Medical Director (CMD) with a dotted line to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Work in collaboration with other corporate team members in the clinical and non-clinical sections indicated within the company organogram as required. It is the role of the DCMD to manage the medical care of all dialysis patients, attend to complications that arise during dialysis, ensure continuity of care and comply with the duties outlined below.

Scope of The Role:

• Delivery of World class clinical care

• Education and Research propagation at AHN

• Compliance and Controls

• Internal and external stakeholder management

• Leadership and Administration

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Delivery of World class clinical care

• Support on development and implementation of evidence-based clinical practices, standards, policies and protocols in accordance with worldwide best practices, as well as country and AHN guidelines, processes and procedures

• Work on developing new policies, practices, processes and procedures when and where required with adequate expert consultations as a dynamic process

• Work with CMD, CD and CMO to organize, enhance, and implement key programs and strategic plans in regular clinical care of patients, inclusive of reactive and proactive reporting requirements

• Coordinate travel for self and Nephrologist to schedule their visits to centers to provide for outpatient dialysis rounds and CKD registry consultations.

• Support the Nursing, Nutritional and Clinical functions in providing holistic clinical care to patients through oversight of the day-to-day operation, quality and patient reviews

including daily rounds of patients, medication oversight and documentation by Clinical Officers and consultants

• Following up on ensuring that the monthly reports of all patients are collected and reviewed at the scheduled multidisciplinary meetings and actions decided implemented.

• Oversee planning and reviewing of patient nutritional care and lifestyle modification needs in collaboration with internal and external consultants to ensure high-quality

Renal Nutrition care including nutrition documentation and data collection from each of the centers.

• Actively involved to oversee into the infection control practices of each center

• To actively work with the CMD and CMO on country quality initiatives e.g., key performance initiatives, center-level audits, dialysis quality index, monthly mortality meetings and multidisciplinary meetings within centers. In consultation with CMO, manage and resolve clinical incidences across Centres, sometimes in conjunction with partner hospitals

• Ensure the center activity timelines are maintained as per the schedule

• Promote and oversee weekly within-center clinical meetings.

• Layout the schedule for the month well in advance to overseeing of the centers.

• Follow up on the unit responsibilities on a month-to-month basis

• Oversight of the clinical daily, weekly and Monthly reporting and clinical e-mails from the centers as well as active follow-up on the reporting from within units e.g., water treatment, IPC, and unit responsibilities

Education and Research:

• Involve in the active clinical teaching and or mentoring of Clinical Officers, Medical Officers, and Nutritionists on a weekly basis.

• Planning and active involvement in the weekly nephrology fireside chats (nephrology educational webinars) and all Nutritional education activities as needed

• Active involvement in propagating research of any sort and encouraging junior staff into the field.

• Actively involved in organizing for members to take part in national and international conferences

• Oversight of the internal and external teams’ participation in upskilling, education

programs and sessions as provided internally or externally e.g., BLS & ACLS in collaboration with AHN teams.

Compliance and Controls

• Ensure compliance with Kenyan medical regulations. Assist to identify and/or implement new and/or changing regulatory requirements.

• Collaboratively support on development and implementation of administrative controls and improvements.

• Support implementation and monitoring of unit level activities and timelines as defined by AHN protocols e.g., KPI tracking, center scores and audit

• Oversee and perform random or pre-planned dialysis center visits to audit clinical teams and unit functioning, Implement and monitor activity times lines across all units and ensure timely completion of all activity timelines as per schedule.

• Review and analyse collected clinical and related data and evaluate adverse events, conduct root cause analyses, and monitor outcomes.

• Attend meetings and support the various clinical teams in the implementation of clinical standards and governance plans and provide expert advice.

• Support and reform analysis of clinical and other incidents, review and research on national and international guidelines to improve practice.

• Under the CMD, implement administrative controls and improvements and recommend changes as needed based on feedback.

• Liaison with the Ministry of Health, NHIF and KHF as needed

• Receive and provide hand-over reports to key team members internally and externally at the dialysis unit or within other meetings as may be planned by the organization.

• Oversee and provide feedback and clinical direction to the center-level daily clinical reporting.

• Oversee and conduct daily follow-ups on new patients, dialysis-related complications, sick patients, admitted patients, IPC practices, and vascular access issues (new or old) as part of the clinical reporting.

• Assist corporate teams in providing oversight of the units by ensuring that all relevant paperwork (i.e., NHIF paperwork) is filled, signed, and submitted on time across the units.

• Ensure proper prescribing of patient tests, medications, and other critical elements of care as required in a timely manner (including ordering necessary monthly tests per the NHIF and National Dialysis Guidelines across all centres).

• Oversee documentation of unit key performance indicators (KPI) tracking, dialysis quality index (DQI), patient satisfaction scoring and audits for quality control across dialysis units and participate in the KPI meetings.

• In consultation with CMD, manage and resolve clinical incidences across centers, Oversee and participate in clinical KPI meetings and oversee implementation of findings or changes.

• Oversee IPC and proactively monitor for infection outbreaks across dialysis units as a top priority issue.

Internal and External Stakeholder Management

• Support in developing and maintaining positive and collaborative working relationships between AHN and clinical stakeholders, including consultants, partner hospitals, Ministry of Health, NHIF, KHF and other stakeholders in respect of clinical standards, governance and service delivery.

• To play an active role in the strategic development of centers and partner hospitals in developing new services and organizational development e.g., vascular access training, Identifying physicians for ISN, and active interdepartmental collaborations.

• Actively contribute and participate in all relevant internal and external discussions and meetings as required, and follow up on agreed action plans.

• Represent AHN in partner hospital activities including streamlining existing processes, attending meetings, CMEs, knowledge sharing, etc

• Support visiting professionals to the dialysis unit e.g., Nephrologists, Vascular Surgeons.

• Secure effective engagement with clinicians at all levels and encourage cross professional collaboration to deliver service improvement.

• Engage collaboratively with the superintending Nephrologist, CMD and CMO in providing reports or handover where required or as scheduled, flag major issues as they occur, support consultants in the scheduled clinic days

• Familiarize with the hospital’s protocols and policies that pertain to hospital-based activities for quality patient care, outcomes and referrals and actively share new AHN SOPs with partner hospital physicians and superintending nephrologists

• Provide bedside assistance and oversight on consultations required for renal patients within the hospital for other medical problems besides dialysis. Emergency dialysis care if required in other areas of the hospital e.g., ICU.

• Ensure compliance with hospital-based EMR systems as required and abide by hospital guidelines as which pertain to patient privacy and confidentiality.

• Identify gaps within the external environment to facilitate improvements and training of partner hospital staff for overall service improvements or provision of new services.

Leadership and Administration

• Provide clinical oversight of members of the clinical function including Clinical Officers, QA Lead and Trainers

• Co-ordinate regular meetings and training with team members and provide training, feedback and mentoring

• Support on the execution of internal and external training and education opportunities e.g., medical CME’s, AHN Fireside Chats, awareness camps etc as per AHN guidelines

• Contribute to creating a work environment that is marked with care, honesty, accountability, transparency, and collaboration.

• Under the CMD, provide direction, guidance, and leadership to staff; advice on the more complex and sensitive clinical concerns and issues; liaise between different department’s management on problem-solving practice and quality patient management processes.

• Direct and approve through direct reports the planning, prioritizing, assigning, supervising, training, and review of the work of a diverse workforce, acting as a resource for the teams (especially the non-clinical teams).

• Deputize for the CMD where required and take a lead role in developing links between the Medical Director’s office and the wider organization, including partner hospitals, in respect of clinical standards and governance.

• Engage with other duties as required (and pertaining to MD scope)

Supervisory Responsibilities (Direct Reports):

• Oversee the quality assurance team and ensure that clinical excellence, DQI, clinical operations audits (spot, minor and major) and scores are frequently carried out within each center.

• Oversee the training teams an ensure that clinical and Nursing team’s quality of caregiving is per international standards.

Other tasks as required.

Desired Competencies:

Qualifications

• MD (undergraduate degree in medicine) with dialysis clinical experience and added administrative or post-graduate qualifications would be a bonus

Skills/Attributes

• Be a registered member of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentist Board (KMPDB) and with a valid practicing license.

• Able to work within one’s professional scope, in line with one’s experience and competence dictated by experience and qualification.

• Conversant with the in-country health landscape and with sufficient knowledge to have compliance with the in-country medical regulations across disease management.

• Experienced practicing clinician with an in-depth understanding of clinical standards, governance, and awareness of clinical audit processes.

• Able to lead, mentor and motivate others, with strong influencing, and relational skills and with a proactive approach to patient management.

• Exhibit the highest level of interpersonal, communication and leadership skills both at clinical and administrative levels. Clearly assess priorities and make decisions, quick to grasp a point, able to “think on their feet”, end-to-end thought processing and able to provide leadership and direction to different teams both internally and externally.

• Ability to analyze highly complex organizational problems and develop and implement workable solutions on the clinical front.

Values

• Patient Focused: Understands how their role impacts the patient journey, and a willingness to place the patient at the center of what they do.

• Achieving Results: Experience in successfully working within deadlines and completing tasks.

• Inspirational Leadership: Keen to develop themselves and others, open to new ideas and willing to share their experience with others.

• Maximizing Value: Takes ownership of challenges and ideates toward effective solutions individually and collaboratively with teams.

• Teamwork: Approachable and able to build relationships with a wide variety of colleagues, consultants and other stakeholders within the health space.

• Equality and Diversity– able to demonstrate a positive and non-judgmental attitude towards differences in terms of service delivery and working practice.

• 6 Cs of Care– is able to show knowledge and understanding of promoting care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment within their role.

Experience

• At least 5 years of work experience in the private sector, with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership in both clinical and administrative roles. Experience in the Healthcare sector or in a fast paced start up environment will be an advantage.

NB: Candidates to be reviewed on a rolling basis