Health System Specialist ( Veteran Experience Officer)

Summary

This position serves as the Chief Patient Experience Officer (PXO), organizationally reporting to the Medical Center Director. This position is located within a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Health Care System (HCS) at Syracuse VA Medical Center. The incumbent is responsible for all functions related to Patient experience matters including Patient experience efforts, policies and activities which may be developed at the National, VISN and HCS levels.

Duties

• Major Duties: The incumbent will be the facility's key person to lead efforts of building, sustaining, and implementing Patient Experience and Employee Engagement practices and environments to promote the culture of positive Patient experiences based on a whole health and Patient centered approach. The incumbent will work with the Center for Development and Civic Engagement and VA Employee Association as well as outside agencies to improve patient satisfaction scores. They will be primarily responsible for bringing systems together to function seamlessly, promoting a culture that considers the needs of the Patients and staff, identifying opportunities to improve experiences, and prioritizing and designing action plans for leadership endorsement. - Lead, coordinate, and manage the continuous improvement of veteran and staff experience - Work with senior executives to establish strong commitment and support for improving veteran and staff experiences - Educate managers and line employees in the philosophy and techniques of experience improvement - Promote an organization-wide approach to patient-centeredness and engagement - Engage the workforce to sustain veteran and staff experience initiatives - Serve as a change agent and work closely with hospital leaders in identifying priority areas, developing goals, planning improvement, and measuring effectiveness - Serve as the subject matter expert on established and evolving best practices related to veteran/staff engagement and veteran/staff experience - Develop and articulate an organizational veteran and staff experience strategy - Facilitate development of detailed work plans related to veteran and staff experience - Collaborate with departments and units to operationalize the veteran and staff experience strategy. - Set objectives and benchmark performance - Supporting proactive veteran experience training and initiatives which may include Own the Moment, patient centered care training, customer service training, New Employee Orientation, New Patient Orientation. - Data sources include but are not limited to: The Patient Advocate Tracking System (PATS), Veteran Signals, Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning (SAIL), Survey of Healthcare Experience of Patients (SHEP), and the All Employee Survey (AES). Work Schedule: Monday through Friday 7:30am-4:00pm Position Description Title/PD#: Health System Specialist ( Veteran Experience Officer)/PD142650 Physical Requirements: The work is sedentary. Some travel is required. No other special physical demands are required of this work. The work is typically performed in an office setting.

Qualifications

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement. Individual Occupational Requirements 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. Specialized Experience 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. There is no educational substitution for the GS-12 level. 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.

Requirements

You must be a U.S. citizen to apply for this job Subject to a background/suitability investigation Selective Service Registration is required for males born after 12/31/1959 A complete application package; Resume, Transcripts, etc. is required 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 identification cards that are not REAL ID compliant cannot be utilized as an acceptable form of identification for employment. Upon completion of your probationary period (OR INSERT "trial period"), your employment will be terminated unless you receive certification, in writing, that your continued employment advances the public interest. As a condition of employment for accepting this position, you will be required to serve a 1-year probationary period (OR INSERT "2-year trial period") during which we will evaluate your fitness and whether your continued employment advances the public interest. In determining if your employment advances the public interest, we may consider: 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 Upon completion of your probationary period or trial period, your employment will be terminated unless you receive certification, in writing, that your continued employment advances the public interest.

Education

Note: Only education or degrees recognized by the U.S. Department of Education from accredited colleges, universities, schools, or institutions may be used to qualify for Federal employment. You can verify your education here: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/.If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education.

How to apply

All applicants are encouraged to apply online. To apply for this position, you must complete the occupational questionnaire and submit the documentation specified in the Required Documents section. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (EST) on 09/21/2026 to receive consideration. To preview the questionnaire click https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/13062970. 1. To begin, click Apply Online to create a USAJOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USAJOBS resume and/or other supporting documents and complete the occupational questionnaire. 2. Click Submit My Answers to submit your application package. Beginning September 27, 2025, Federal agencies will only accept resumes up to two pages in length to comply with the Merit Hiring Plan. Resumes longer than two pages will result in ineligibility for further consideration for the position. USAJOBS will not allow you to upload or build resumes longer than two pages, and you will need to update the resumes in your profile before applying for a job. Resumes should include information relevant to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of the position to which you are applying. VA is unable to make assumptions about qualifications if not clearly listed. Resumes must be legible so they can be reviewed for eligibility, minimum qualifications and other position requirements listed in the job announcement. Your resume must be 5MB or less. We recommend saving and uploading your resume as a PDF to maintain formatting and number of pages. We also accept GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, TXT, PDF, ODT or Word (DOC or DOCX). We do not accept PDF portfolio files. We recommend using a sans-serif font size like Lato, if available. Other widely available options are Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Open San Source Sans Pro, Roboto or Noro Sans. Make your page margins 0.5 inches. Consider using 14-point size font for titles and 10-point for the main text in your resume. The resume builder can help you create a resume using these recommendations and uses the information in your USAJOBS profile to help you get started. Helpful Hints for Creating a Two-Page Resume: Prioritize most relevant and recent experience Use concise, results focused language Align language from the job announcement Focus on demonstrating skills and competencies Remove outdated or unrelated experience Use the USAJOBS resume builder Additional guidance on this new requirement and resume building tools can be found at: https://help.usajobs.gov/faq/application/documents/resume/page-limit https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/merit-hiring-plan-resources/applicant-guidance-on-the-two-page-resume-limit/