SUPERVISORY PHYSICIAN

Overview

Who May Apply: Supervisory Physician (lead of the External Patient Safety Event Investigations (EPSEI))

The City of Falls Church is a unique and historic city. Besides featuring quick access to renowned museums and art galleries in nearby Washington, D.C., almost every neighborhood is a treasure of its own with a variety of restaurants and shops that reflect the city's great ethnic and cultural diversity. You'll find a warm welcome in the City of Falls Church where you can shop, play, and join in the many activities offered throughout the year.

The city is conveniently located just miles from Washington, DC. (City Hall is only nine miles from the White House.) Falls Church is easily access by Routes 66 and 50, the East and West Falls Church Metro Stations (Orange Line), and by a number of bus routes. Interestingly, neither Metro station lies within the City's boundary.

The Defense Health Agency (DHA) is a joint, integrated Combat Support Agency that enables the Army, Navy, and Air Force medical services to provide a medically ready force and ready medical force to Combatant Commands in both peacetime and wartime. The DHA supports the delivery of integrated, affordable, and high quality health services to Military Health System (MHS) beneficiaries and is responsible for driving greater integration of clinical and business processes across the MHS.

Responsibilities

This position is located within the Medical Affairs, Clinical Support Division, Clinical Quality Management Branch, Patient Safety Program in Falls Church, VA.

MAJOR DUTIES:

The incumbent provides mission essential expertise serving as the Lead of the External Patient Safety Event Investigations (EPSEI) functional capability within the Patient Safety Program. Responsibilities include oversight of all activities within the EPSEI program, and integration across all work areas within the Patient Safety Program, leading investigative processes, system-wide strategic communications regarding vulnerabilities and patient safety improvements, providing field support to Markets and MTFs, and monitors metrics and trends to evaluate EPSEI and Field Operations effectiveness. Directs team(s) to investigate patient safety events from multiple data sources to identify system-level vulnerabilities and trends. Advises Chief of Patient Safety, Chief of Clinical Quality Management and DHA senior leadership of findings and makes recommendations regarding further actions required. Follow-up actions may include further investigation, Market and/or MTF implementation and sustainment of corrective actions, recommendations and implementation for enterprise-level improvement activities, and coordination with various DHA and other stakeholders to implement improvement initiatives.

1. Determines EPSEI program goals and develops plans for the organization independently of or jointly with higher management. Determines resource needs and allocation of resources and accounts for their effective use. Determines EPSEI program emphasis and operating guidelines and understands and communicates agency policies and priorities throughout the organization. Directs all engagement and coordination with MTFs and Markets related to the EPSEI process, including pre-, during, and post-investigation. Ensures execution of investigative analyses that reconstruct an incident sequence, understand clinical process failures and latent vulnerabilities, identify human factor contributions, and determine corrective actions to mitigate future risk. As directed, manages the development, approval, and implementation of investigation methodologies and tools. Responsible for the quality and consistency of investigative analyses and accompanying documentation and work products, including clinical lessons learned, recommended solutions, and corrective actions to mitigate future risk, prevent errors, and plan for sustainment. When required, travels to MTFs/DTFs worldwide to oversee onsite operations during an investigation. Addresses general personnel management policy matters, personnel actions affecting key employees, and other actions. Oversees the overall planning, direction, and timely execution of the EPSEI program. Manages the development of policy changes in response to changes in levels of appropriations or other legislated changes. Manages organizational changes thorough the organization directed, or major change to the content of the EPSEI program. Serves as an authoritative source for decisions and guidance dealing with compromises and changes in EPSEI program objective and implements overall programs and project management guidance and policy.

2. Serves in a supervisory capacity (approximately 13 employees) as a first level supervisor for EPSEI Unit staff and processes. The highly visible EPSEI program is critical to the DHA management and administration of the MTFs; and is of continual interest of senior MHS leadership, Congress, media (on behalf of the public at large), and other stakeholders. Supervises clinical and administrative teams that perform comprehensive systematic analyses at MTFs/DTFs. Responsible for administrative oversight of all personnel and offices in support of EPSEI. The role entails the planning of work to be accomplished by subordinates, setting and adjusting short-term priorities, and preparing schedules for completion of work. As a working supervisor, assigns work to subordinates based on priorities with selective consideration of the difficulty and requirements of assignments and the capabilities of employees. This is followed by evaluation of the work performance of subordinates. In the supervisory capacity, provides expert clinical and non-clinical insight, gives advice, offers counsel and/or instruction to employees on both work and administrative matters; identifies developmental and training needs of employees, providing or arranging for needed development and training; and finds ways to improve production or increase the quality of the work directed.

3. The Physician directs and coordinates processes to identify system-level vulnerabilities and inform enterprise-level patient safety improvements based on consolidated analyses of investigation findings. Oversees common cause analyses and trend surveillance across the clinical event investigation spectrum and manages the dissemination of relevant clinical quality and safety information across the MHS, including patient safety incident specific strategic communications to share with DHA leadership, Clinical Communities, Markets, MTFs/DTFs, and other relevant stakeholders. Responsible for ensuring that strategic messaging for individual and consolidated events is catalogued in the Patient Safety Learning Center and/or similar repository consistent with current Patient Safety Program practices and as directed by the Chief, Patient Safety Program. Provides consultation to the Patient Safety Program and MHS leadership on proposed change strategies and enterprise learning from EPSEI; comprehensive systematic analysis methodology, classification, and investigation; and strategic messaging for EPSEI and other internal clinical event investigations. 20%

4. Oversees all field support to MTFs/DTFs worldwide for comprehensive systematic analyses following patient safety events. Responsible for the resourcing of EPSEI Unit staff to provide remote support to MTFs/DTFs for the comprehensive systematic analyses process and supporting documentation. Directs all engagement and coordination with MTFs/DTFs and Markets related to the comprehensive systematic analysis process.

5. Formulates multi-year EPSEI and field operations business plans, policies, objectives, priorities, and methods of implementation. Oversees that all EPSEI activities are in accordance with DHA-PM 6025.13 Clinical Quality Management, Volume 2, Patient Safety and directs the development of administrative policies as required. Establishes and monitors metrics/trends to evaluate EPSEI Unit and field support effectiveness. Responsible for ensuring that comprehensive systematic analyses and supporting documentation meet requirements for accreditation agencies.

Performs other duties as assigned.

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION :

Federal agencies must provide reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities where appropriate. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process should contact the hiring agency directly. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.

A reasonable accommodation is any change to a job, the work environment, or the way things are usually done that enables an individual with a disability to apply for a job, perform job duties or receive equal access to job benefits.

Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, federal agencies must provide reasonable accommodations when:

•An applicant with a disability needs an accommodation to have an equal opportunity to apply for a job.

•An employee with a disability needs an accommodation to perform the essential job duties or to gain access to the workplace.

•An employee with a disability needs an accommodation to receive equal access to benefits, such as details, training, and office-sponsored events.

You can request a reasonable accommodation at any time during the application or hiring process or while on the job. Requests are considered on a case-by-case basis.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY :

The Defense Health Agency does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.