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The Director, Informatics Patient Safety (IPS) is the most senior leader responsible for promoting safe use and safe operation of health IT in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). The Director also leads collaboration with other government agencies and industry associations for the same. IPS offers services in areas of Safety Surveillance, Investigation, and Mitigation (SSIM), Knowledge Dissemination (KD), and Knowledge Discovery (KDIS). Individuals directly impacted include an estimated 120,000 clinicians, 7 million Veterans, caregivers, and tens of thousands of other healthcare workers. IPS is located within the Clinical Informatics and Data Management Office (CIDMO) in the Office of Health Informatics in VHA.

Duties may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Oversees the VHA work of the IPS office and assigned programs, including assessing policy, program and project feasibility.
• Determines program goals and developing implementation strategies; and promoting an organizational structure to support effective work accomplishment.
• Works independently and has extensive quantitative and qualitative experience.
• Makes independent decisions about the appropriate allocation of time and effort to individual and collaborative work and to keep Clinical Informatics and Data Management Office Director and Deputy informed at all times should there be any issues or failure of the plan or plans that leads to a lack of execution according to established timelines.

Executive Program Planning, Management:

• Develops comprehensive Informatics and patient safety programs which have a substantial impact on VHA's provision of healthcare to our patients through the assessment of healthcare work processes and socio-technical models to proactively identify risks to prevent harm with the use of information systems used by all clinicians, veterans and caregivers throughout the VA.
• Directs teams that use a variety of hazard surveillance methods and tools to predict risks of patient harm data and design information flows, workflows and system interfaces and assess the safest possible use of applications, systems, and devices targeted for such for variety of end users, to include clinical, administrative and Veterans.
• Ensures that the organization's strategic plan, mission, vision and values are widely communicated and integrated into the team's strategies, goals, objectives, work plans and work products and services.

Supervisory and/or Managerial Responsibilities:

• Exercises final authority for the full range of personnel actions and organization design proposals recommended by subordinate supervisors.
• Exercises significant responsibilities in dealing with officials of other units or organizations, and in advising management officials of higher rank.
• Assures reasonable equity (among units, groups, teams, projects, etc.) of performance standards and rating techniques developed by subordinates.
• Evaluates subordinate supervisors or leaders and serves as the reviewing official on evaluations of nonsupervisory employees rated by subordinate supervisors.

Technical and Authoritative Subject Matter - Expert Informatics and Patient Safety:

• Oversees and manages contracts, Interpersonal agreements, and research agreements for strategies and processes to proactively assess and improve VHA's patient safety efforts in the full lifecycle of complex health information systems.
• Serves as the leader and responsible manager for overseeing all VHA Health IT Patient Safety activities including evaluating surveillance methods and implementation practices, conducting retrospective and proactive risk assessments, professional workforce inn development, and innovative method development.
• Analyzes program and management strategies and goals to ensure appropriate risk management practices and principles are used.
• Serves as the primary liaison for patient safety to VA's National Center for Patient Safety, Office of Safety and Quality, Clinical Managers, and VISN CIO Council, as well as VA's Office of Information & Technology (OI&T) staff and the national advisory groups.

Program Administration and Operations Management:

• Ensures the on-time preparation and submission of defensible multi-million-dollar budget requests.
• Applies fiscal knowledge and skills to actively manage budget allocation against prepared spend plan.
• Serves as senior government program manager on national contracts managed within the IPS program.
• Demonstrates and applies relevant knowledge and skills required to work with acquisition centers to manage large solicitations in support of multiple concurrent multimillion-dollar projects.
• Identifies program performance measures and metrics, prepares and submits an annual plan approved by the CIDMO Director and Deputy Director.

Work Schedule: Monday - Friday; 8:00am - 4:30pm.
Recruitment & Relocation Incentives: Not authorized
Financial Disclosure Report: Not Required

Conditions of employment

• You must be a U.S. Citizen to apply for this job
• Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959
• You may be required to serve a probationary period
• Subject to background/security investigation
• Selected applicants will be required to complete an online onboarding process
• Participation in the seasonal influenza vaccination program is a requirement for all Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care Personnel (HCP)
• Participation in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination program is a requirement for all Veterans Health Administration Health Care Personnel (HCP) - See "Additional Information" below for details.

Qualifications

This position includes three (3) Selective Placement Factors (skill, knowledge, ability or other worker characteristic basic to - and essential for - satisfactory performance of the job). Selective Placement Factors are a prerequisite to appointment and represent minimum requirements for a position. Applicants who do not meet it are ineligible for further consideration.

The Selective Placement Factors for this position are:
(1) Selective Placement Factor (Screen-out): Having extensive experience managing, leading, supervising, and developing health information technology (HIT) patient safety programs at a regional or national level. (i.e., such as, interacting with local, regional, and national health care organizations, including executive level relationships).
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(2)Selective Placement Factor (Screen-out): Having leadership experience in informatics innovation, acquisition and implementation of applications that leverage EHR, PHR, and analytical platforms and integrate into clinical workflows.
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(3) Selective Placement Factor (Screen-out): Having evidence of thought leadership such as; peer-reviewed publications on topics related to patient safety; plenary speaker engagements in safety; IT or informatics conferences; or workgroup lead in national safety informatics or quality organizations. (Adequate response is the specific details of either the publication/topic, conference/topic, or workgroup position).
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ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: In accordance with 38 U.S.C. 7402(d), No person shall serve in direct patient care positions unless they are proficient in basic written and spoken English. You must be proficient in basic written and spoken English in order to meet the requirements of this position.
and
In additionto meeting the three (3) selective placement factors above, you must also meet the following additional specialized experience and additional experience requirements.
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SPECIALIZED EXPERIENCE GS-15: You must have at least one (1) year of specialized experience that equipped you with the particular knowledge, skills and abilities to perform successfully the duties of a Supervisory Health System Specialist. To be creditable, specialized experience must have been equivalent to at least the GS-14 grade level in Federal service. Specialized experience includes: having a Major study -- hospital administration, public health administration, or related fields such as business or public administration with course work in health care administration or having progressively responsible analytical or administrative, or clinical management or supervisory experience in the health care field; this work may have been performed in an operating health care facility or a higher organizational echelon with advisory or directional authority over such facilities; work must have involved a close working relationship with facility managers and analysis and/or coordination of administrative, clinical, or other service activities, and provided knowledge of the following:

• Missions, organizations, programs, and requirements of health care delivery systems;
• Regulations and standards of various regulatory and credentialing groups; and
• Government-wide, agency, and facility systems and requirements in various administrative areas such as budget, personnel, and procurement.

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In addition to meeting the above specialized experience guidance, some examples of experience required includes:

Experience: having experience within Informatics Patient Safety; having extensive experience with Informatics Patient Safety along with program and project management; possess a strong ability to plan, implement, analyze and supervise a broad range and quantity of simultaneous activities; expertise in surveillance/risk/quality management methods, resource management, personnel administration, customer relations management, and business reporting system design and planning; expert knowledge of Informatics and Patient Safety principles and practices; having the ability to translate this knowledge and apply it to work involving the design of human computer interfaces used continuously by millions of patients, their caregivers and clinicians when interacting with information systems.

You will be rated on the following Competencies as part of the assessment questionnaire for this position:

• Communication
• Health Informatics
• Leadership
• Performance Measurement
• Risk Management

IMPORTANT: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. All experience listed on your resume must include the month and year start/end dates. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment.

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE WILL NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE. If your resume does not support your questionnaire answers, we will not allow credit for your response(s).

Your responses to the assessment questionnaire will be reviewed along with the information provided in your resume and supporting documentation to determine if you are qualified for the position. If, after reviewing your resume and/or supporting documentation, a determination is made that you have inflated your qualifications and or experience, your rating may be lowered and/or you may lose consideration for this position. Please follow all instructions carefully. Errors or omissions may affect your eligibility.

Candidates who apply under All U.S. Citizens announcements will be rated and ranked using Category Rating procedures. Qualified candidates will be assigned to a quality category. The categories are defined as follows:

• Best qualified - applicants possessing experience that substantially exceeds the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors, and who are highly proficient in all requirements of the job and can perform effectively in the position;
• Highly qualified - applicants possessing experience that exceeds the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors, and who are proficient in most of the requirements of the job;
• Well qualified - applicants possessing experience that meets the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors, and who are proficient in some, but not all, of the requirements of the job; and
• Qualified - applicants possessing experience and/or education that meets the minimum qualifications of the position including all selective factors.

Application of Veterans' Preference: Category rating and selection procedures place those with veteran's preference above non-preference eligibles within each category. Preference eligible applicants that meet the eligibility and qualification requirements and who have a compensable service-connected disability of at least 10 percent are listed in the highest quality category (except when the position being filled is scientific or professional at the GS-09 grade level or higher).

It is the policy of the VA to not deny employment to those that have faced financial hardships or periods of unemployment.

Veterans and Transitioning Service Members: Please visit the VA for Vets site for career-search tools for Veterans seeking employment at VA, career development services for our existing Veterans, and coaching and reintegration support for military service members.