Clarification from the agency

ALL US CITIZENS. DIRECT HIRE AUTHORITY: This position is being filled using Direct-Hire Authority (COVID-19 - VA 005) in-accordance with 5 U.S.C. 3304(a)(3) and 5 CFR 337.205(b)(1)-(4).

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.

• Develops comprehensive Informatics and patient safety programs which have a substantial impact on VHA's provision of healthcare to 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
• Serves as subject matter expert on matters related to patient safety and informatics, specifically implementation of health information technology in delivery of healthcare that affect the VA and Veterans
• Serves as the leader and responsible manager for overseeing all VHA Health IT Patient Safety activities including evaluating surveillance methods and implementation practices, and conducting retrospective and proactive risk assessments
• Develops and implements metrics and measures of effectiveness for enterprise-wide projects
• Provides guidance and coordination to IPS staff throughout the program lifecycle to resolve complex and controversial system programmatic, funding, or user issues; leads and conducts studies of work processes, operational interrelationships, and current and future programmatic and user requirements
• Provides expert senior level leadership, management and supervision to major projects, problems and studies that cover the whole range of Health IT Patient Safety activities, i.e., management, assessment and implementation to ensure that the VA/DOD and other patient safety programs/projects are delivered effectively and efficiently
• Utilizes strong senior leadership skills to establish an organizational vision, and influence others to translate vision into action in a continuously changing environment; and formulate objectives and priorities and implement plans consistent with the long-term interests of the organization
• Directs a team of government and contract support resources consisting of a diverse collection of health informatics safety analysts, pharmacists, physician, nurse, data scientist/analyst, cognitive psychologist and subject matter experts
• Responsible for researching and investigating new or improved patient safety risk management applications to business and management practices for application to agency programs or operations
• Identifies IPS program performance measures and metrics, monitors and analyzes program performance with responsibility to take corrective action on sub-performing elements, and prepares and submits an annual plan

Work Schedule: Monday - Friday, 8am - 4:30pm
Virtual: This is a virtual position.
Position Description Title/PD#: Supervisory Health System Specialist (Director, Informatics Patient Safety)/PD Number 85595-0
Physical Requirements: The work is primarily sedentary and requires no special physical abilities
Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized
Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized
Financial Disclosure Report: Not required

Conditions of employment

• You must be a U.S. citizen to apply for this job
• Subject to a background/suitability investigation
• Designated and/or random drug testing may be required
• May serve a probationary period
• Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959
• A complete application package; Resume, Transcripts, etc.
• Selected applicants will be required to complete an online onboarding process

Qualifications

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 05/09/2022.

Time-In-Grade Requirement: Applicants who are current Federal employees and have held a GS grade any time in the past 52 weeks must also meet time-in-grade requirements by the closing date of this announcement. For a GS-15 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-14. The grade may have been in any occupation, but must have been held in the Federal service. An SF-50 that shows your time-in-grade eligibility must be submitted with your application materials. If the most recent SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you possess one-year time-in-grade, as required by the announcement. In this instance, you must provide an additional SF-50 that clearly demonstrates one-year time-in-grade.

Note: Time-In-Grade requirements also apply to former Federal employees applying for reinstatement as well as current employees applying for Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998 (VEOA) appointment.

Individual Occupational Requirement: In order to meet the basic requirement of the Health System Administration, 0671 Occupational series, you must possess:

• An undergraduate or graduate level degree with a Major study in hospital administration, public health administration, or related fields such as business or public administration with course work in health care administration, OR
• 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.

Specialized Experience: In addition to the Individual Occupational Requirement outlined above, you must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade (GS-14) in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to:

• Having extensive experience with Informatics Patient Safety along with program and project management
• Possessing 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
• Translating knowledge and applying 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.

Selective Placement Factors: In addition to the requirements above, candidates must meet the following Selective Placement Factors. 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:

• At least 5 years' experience managing, leading, supervising, and developing health information technology (HIT) patient safety programs at a regional or national level. The candidate must also have experience interacting with local, regional, and national health care organizations, including executive level relationships. AND
• At least five years of leadership experience in informatics innovation, acquisition and implementation of applications that leverage EHR, PHR, and analytical platforms and integrate into clinical workflows. AND
• 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.)

You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position:

• Health Informatics - Knowledge of health informatics, i.e. design, configuration and management of health information and clinical support systems; health data collection, storage, extraction, manipulation, reporting and communications.
• Risk Management - Knowledge of the principles, methods, and tools used for risk assessment and mitigation, including assessment of failures and their consequences.
• Performance Measurement - Knowledge of the principles and methods for evaluating program or organizational performance using financial and non-financial measures, including identification of evaluation factors (for example, workload, personnel requirements), metrics, and outcomes.
• Leadership - Inspires, motivates, and guides others toward goal accomplishment; coaches, mentors, and challenges subordinates; adapts leadership styles to a variety of situations; models high standards of honesty, integrity, trust, openness, and respect for the individual by applying these values to daily behaviors.
• Communications - Expresses information (for example, ideas or facts) to individuals or groups effectively, taking into account the audience and nature of the information (for example, technical, sensitive, controversial); makes clear and convincing presentations; listens to others, attends to nonverbal cues, and responds appropriately.

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; religions; 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.

Note: A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. 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.

Physical Requirements: The work is primarily sedentary.

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. Applicants will be referred in the order in which they were received.