Clarification from the agency

Open to Current Permanent VA Connecticut Health Care System Employees Only

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

• Serves as the knowledge expert for the electronic health record and associated clinical software, and provides users and staff with consultative support and education.
• Consults, advises, and educates all levels of employees including the highest levels of management, on methods and means to make health care operations more effective and efficient.
• Represents a wide variety of stakeholders and liaisons with both internal and external organizations.
• Identifies end-user educational requirements and training needs; develops educational programs and instructional materials and appropriate tools to educate the users and support staff at all levels of the organization, and trains others to deliver educational programs.
• Monitors end user satisfaction to drive enhancements and increase performance.
• Examines the need for change throughout the organization, determines what changes need to be aligned and how to do it, and leads or participates on process improvement, root cause analysis and system redesign teams.
• Exercises expertise in clinical operations, develops and/or oversees the development of information related to patient care, such as patient registries to allow the Clinical Team to track management of patient illnesses; and develops performance management tracking tools.
• Maintains state of the art knowledge of changes in technology and clinical environment to identify, propose, formulate and support new or revised major administrative and clinical policies and directives for clinical software packages in accordance with VHA regulations.
• Advises those in the Informatics organizational structure of programmatic (formal and informal methods) and security requirements for data access, and advises staff members on directives, policies, and best practices for making requirements operational.
• Integrates software applications for clinical services by evaluating the unique needs of the specific clinical services in conjunction with the capabilities of the software and coordinating any required modifications; reviewing the effectiveness of the systems and procedures to assure optimum benefit to patient care activities; and troubleshooting when functionality is compromised by determining the cause of and/or the solution to the problem.
• Conducts tests to analyze usability, sequencing, flow, plain language, minimum key strokes, and comfort level of the user, ensuring adaptability of the process(es) to the workflow and that the processes used are the most efficient and effective.
• Provides direct feedback to national developers to ensure that usability issues are addressed in actual and anticipated changes in software. Drawing on extensive clinical input, redesigns and customizes business processes; adapts processes to work flow, making sure that they make sense and add efficiency and effectiveness to the operation; eliminates redundancy and removes outdated processes.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Conditions of employment

• You must be a U.S. Citizen to apply for this job
• All applicants tentatively selected for VA employment in a testing designated position are subject to urinalysis to screen for illegal drug use prior to appointment. Applicants who refuse to be tested will be denied employment with VA.
• Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959
• Subject to background/security investigation
• Selected applicants will be required to complete an online onboarding process. Acceptable form(s) of identification will be required to complete pre-employment requirements (https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/form-i-9-acceptable-documents). Effective May 7, 2025, driver's licenses or state-issued dentification cards that are not REAL ID compliant cannot be utilized as an acceptable form of identification for employment.
• Participation in the seasonal influenza vaccination program is a requirement for all Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care Personnel (HCP)

• your performance and conduct;
• the needs and interests of the agency;
• whether your continued employment would advance organizational goals of the agency or the Government; and
• whether your continued employment would advance the efficiency of the Federal service.

Qualifications

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 12/30/2025.

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-12 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-11 grade level. 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.

GRADE REQUIREMENTS
You may qualify based on you meeting the requirements below:

GS-12 Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade (GS-11) in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Representing a wide variety of stakeholders and liaisons with both internal and external organizations. Identifying end-user educational requirements and training needs; developing educational programs and instructional materials and appropriate tools to educate the users and support staff at all levels of the organization, and training others to deliver educational programs. Monitoring end user satisfaction to drive enhancements and increase performance. Examining the need for change throughout the organization, determines what changes need to be aligned and how to do it, and leading or participating on process improvement, root cause analysis and system redesign teams. Exercising expertise in clinical operations, develops and/or oversees the development of information related to patient care, such as patient registries to allow the Clinical Team to track management of patient illnesses; and develops performance management tracking tools. Extracting, analyzing and providing data to assess treatment impacts such as: clinical endpoints, health status outcomes and utility estimates; estimated usage; characteristics of treating designated populations; evaluating patterns of substitution against other products such as resource impact assessments. Actively participates in the development of clinical decision-support systems with, for example, the Pharmacy and Therapeutic Committee; the Medical Records Committee; the Clinical Executive Board; program development vendors using Commercial Off The Shelf Software (COTS) and decision support systems; clinical informatics oversight committees; Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee; others as may be decided locally.

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

• Data Management
• Education and Training
• Knowledge Management
• Planning and Evaluating
• Reasoning

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.

Narrative responses are not required at this time. If you are referred for consideration, you may be asked to submit additional job related information, which may include, but not limited to; responses to the knowledge, skills and abilities; completion of a work sample, and/or contact for an interview. Your resume and/or supporting documentation will be verified. Please follow all instructions carefully. Errors or omissions may affect your rating or consideration for employment.

The Department of Veterans Affairs performs pre-employment reference checks as an assessment method used in the hiring process to verify information provided by a candidate (e.g., on resume or during interview or hiring process); gain additional knowledge regarding a candidate's abilities; and assist a hiring manager with making a final selection for a position.

For more information on the "Who may apply" eligibility requirements, please refer to the OHRM Status Candidates and Other Candidate Definitions document.

Placement Policy: The posting of this announcement does not obligate management to fill a vacancy or vacancies by promotion. The position may be filled by reassignment, change to lower grade, transfer, appointment, or reinstatement. Management may use any one or any combination of these methods to fill the position.

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.

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

• Resume
• SF-50/ Notification of Personnel Action

• Cover Letter
• DD-214/ Statement of Service
• Disability Letter (Schedule A)
• Disability Letter (VA)
• License
• Other (1)
• Other (2)
• Resume
• Separation Notice (RIF)
• SF-15
• SF-50/ Notification of Personnel Action
• Transcript

• Most recent SF-50 if you are a current or former Federal employee
• An SF-50 showing 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
• Award 50's do not provide sufficient information and will not be accepted for the purpose of verifying time-in-grade.
• 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.

Next steps