To qualify for a Health System Specialist position, you must meet the individual occupational requirement and specialized experience requirements. When answering the questionnaire, remember that your experience is subject to verification by investigation. You may be asked to provide specific examples or documentation of experience as proof to support your answers, or you may be required to verify a response by a practical demonstration of your claimed ability to perform a task. Your resume must support your responses to the questionnaire. Select the response that best describes your qualifications for this position.

Individual Occupational Requirement (IOR): In order to meet the basic requirement for this position, you must have one of the following:

Undergraduate and Graduate Education:

Major study -- 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.

Special Provision for Inservice Placement:

Successful completion of an agency-sponsored on-the-job training program may be substituted for qualifying experience, provided it included a formal individualized training plan. Such a training program must have been conducted in an operating health care system and included:

• Assignments providing a knowledge of basic health system administration philosophies, practices, and procedures, and basic government administrative policies and requirements;

• Practical assignments providing an opportunity to apply health system administration skills and principles (as the individual progresses, work assignments must be characteristic of the grade level to which he or she is assigned); and

• Oversight by an experienced health system administrator with periodic evaluation of the individual's progress and appropriate adjustment of the training program.

Do you meet the IOR requirement?

Time in Grade Restrictions - 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.

***Note*** If you have not held a GS grade at any time in the past 52 weeks, this restriction does not apply to you.

For this vacancy, to be eligible for the GS-13 you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-12.

Do you meet the Time in Grade Requirement?

Specialized Experience - Do you possess at least one (1) full year of specialized experience, which equips you with the particular knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the Health System Specialist, GS-13 position?

To be creditable, this specialized experience must have been equivalent to the grade 12 level in Federal service to qualify at the grade 13.

Examples of specialized experience include but not limited to:

• Serve as a Contracting Office Representative, working closely with leadership and VHA contracting office officials for contract development, posting, award and management.

• Work side by side with supervisor and other subject matter experts (SMEs) in the development of contract management tools to ensure all objectives are brought forward and addressed with contractors providing molecular testing.

• Serve as the conduit for information flow and management of assignments including data flow pipeline development, data template creations, many aspects of clinical services delivery, and training.

• Monitor and manage incoming actions and requests from collaborative interactions with leadership and vendor(s) offering testing to track all actions for testing implementation and management.

• Receives and monitors completed actions or responses; analyzes responses for completeness and accuracy against known policies and procedures; and ensures action or inquiry is closed out with the inquirer or office.

• Works closely with senior management and others in implementing and evaluating policies, plans, and internal operational systems such as correspondence management, information tracking among pertinent offices and stakeholders, development of a quality assurance and monitoring program, proposing solutions to operational issues and internal/external communication flows.

• Contacts and engages frequently with staff at all levels to facilitate the work of the office related to a variety of operations focused assignments and projects initiated by senior leadership or program offices, or departmental offices.

• Identify substantive issues, establish relative priorities, evaluate possible solutions and to track progress.

• Develop standardized practices for the implementation and management of molecular testing to streamline processes internally and for providers using these services to treat patients.

• Development of numerous forms of written documentation applicable to a variety of audiences supporting internal functions of central office and external needs of medical providers and support staff utilizing this molecular testing.

Verification Statement: Your rating is subject to verification based on the resume, narratives and other relevant documents you submit, and through verification of references as appropriate. Deliberate attempts to falsify information are grounds for non-selection and for termination. In addition, falsifying information on your application can result in your being barred from federal employment.  

Resume Reminder: Your resume must include the following information: Experience: Starting and ending dates of experience (month and year), hours worked per week and salary information). Education: name and location of college, dates attended, and type and date of any degree earned.  To ensure you are properly rated, you must make certain the required experience and knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) listed in the qualifications section is addressed in detail in your resume. Please be aware that your answers will be verified against information provided on your resume. Be sure that your resume clearly supports your responses to all of the questions by addressing your work experience in detail. Recommended: Even though we do not require a specific resume format, your resume must be clear so that we are able to fully evaluate your qualifications. To ensure you receive appropriate consideration, please list the duties you performed under each individual job title. If we are unable to match your experiences with the positions held, you may lose consideration for this vacancy. We cannot make assumptions regarding your qualifications. 

Required Documents: To apply for this position, you must provide a complete Application Package which includes: 

• Resume 

• Most recent SF-50 if you are a current or former Federal employee - SF50 must be dated 1/2/22 or more recent to verify current VA (Area of Consideration) status 

• CTAP documentation (if applicable) 

• Time in Grade Verification SF50: If you are a current or former Federal employee applying for a higher grade and your SF-50 has an effective date within the past year, it may not clearly demonstrate you meet the one year time-in-grade requirement so you will need to provide an SF-50 which clearly demonstrates you meet the time-in-grade requirements. Examples of appropriate SF-50's include: 

  • Within grade increases at the highest grade held; or 

  • Promotions with an effective date more than one year old; or 

  • SF-50's at the highest grade held with an effective date more than one year old 

• Transcript(s) if basing any part of your qualifications on education 

• If prior military service, include all copies of your DD-214 or proof of service, as well as proof of disability if applicable 

Area of Consideration - Applicants will be considered within the following Areas of Consideration:  

• First Area of Consideration:  Office of Specialty Care Services - Employees who are current, permanent employees within this office. 

• Second Area of Consideration: VA employees - Current, Permanent Veterans Health Administration employees not included in the first area of consideration 

• Third Area of Consideration - All other eligible