Maternal-Referral Network Board Adviser

The mandate

The committee repeatedly asks whether an approved referral protocol translates into dependable transfer when clinic capability, road time, ambulance availability and receiving-hospital capacity change by hour. Reported referrals close when a patient leaves the originating site, even if acceptance, arrival or definitive handover is unconfirmed. The adviser’s standing question is what operational evidence directors need to govern a complete, equitable maternal referral without making clinical prioritisation themselves.

The cadence is four days monthly: one de-identified pathway review, one capacity-and-access challenge, chair preparation and either committee attendance or a field evidence day. Six formal committee meetings and four clinic, transport or hospital reviews are included. A material service event receives a response within twenty-four hours. Live referral, clinical escalation, ambulance dispatch and patient communication remain outside the advisory cadence and with authorised practitioners.

The term lasts ten months through two seasonal access periods and the network’s next service-contract review. One two-month renewal may be approved if a named regional redesign remains incomplete and conflicts are refreshed. The adviser will leave a board referral-evidence framework, decision history, inequity indicators and monitoring calendar. The chair determines renewal after considering whether management can sustain the challenge independently.

The adviser has no line authority, clinical responsibility, dispatch authority, patient access or committee vote. Clinicians determine care and urgency, transport controllers dispatch, hospitals accept, and executives operate services. The adviser may test evidence, challenge missing closure and recommend capacity or governance action, but cannot review identifiable cases unnecessarily, direct an ambulance, determine destination, prescribe treatment, certify quality or represent a regulator.

Relationships with ambulance providers, hospitals, clinic operators, maternal-health programmes, insurers, donors, digital-referral vendors or relevant investors require disclosure. A current role for a provider under review triggers recusal. Other non-conflicting appointments are allowed within the stated commitment. Compensation is independent of referral volume, supplier selection, programme funding, hospital utilisation or reported clinical outcome.

Why the board wants this voice

Clinical leaders see individual urgency, transport partners see dispatch and hospitals see arriving demand, but the board lacks an operational view of the full transfer. High completion rates can conceal failed acceptance and geographic inequality. An independent network operator can make dependencies and unresolved journeys visible while respecting every clinical and statutory boundary.

What you will own

• Press management to trace referral need, clinical decision, acceptance, transport, arrival, handover and follow-up as one journey.
• Test pathway readiness across time, geography, weather, communications, vehicle, blood, theatre and specialist constraints.
• Challenge completion measures that stop at dispatch, departure or electronic message rather than confirmed clinical handover.
• Examine rural and vulnerable cohorts for additional delay, cost, failed contact and unavailable destination alternatives.
• Shape board thresholds for capacity escalation, partner cure, pathway suspension and regional investment.
• Maintain independent records of evidence limits, professional dependencies, conflicts, dissent and unclosed journeys.
• Leave the committee a repeatable referral review using de-identified, minimum-necessary evidence.

Candidate qualifications

• Has governed maternal, emergency, trauma or comparable time-critical referral networks across multiple providers, remote origins and constrained receiving hospitals.
• Can evidence a service change prompted by tracing transfers beyond departure to accepted clinical handover.
• Understands clinic capability, ambulance dispatch, receiving capacity, communication, consent and safeguarding interfaces.
• Has advised boards on access inequality without inferring clinical quality from operational data alone.
• Can challenge accountable clinicians and operators while preserving professional judgment and patient confidentiality.
• Is independent of relevant care providers, transport firms, donors, insurers, technology vendors and commissioners.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend six Nairobi committee sessions and four controlled referral-pathway evidence visits.
• Will not direct care, determine urgency, dispatch transport, select destinations or contact patients.
• Brings direct time-critical care-network governance; public-health policy alone is insufficient.
• Will disclose provider, donor, insurer, vendor and investment interests before reviewing protected evidence.

1. 49 words maximum. Which referral status most often created a false impression of completed maternal transfer?
2. 49 words maximum. What provider, transport, donor, insurer or technology interests would this board need disclosed?
3. 49 words maximum. When did geographic access evidence change a board’s referral-capacity decision?