“Senior IT executives across several Federal agencies devoted to providing healthcare discussed mission imperatives, technology design requirements, and workforce needs during a wide-ranging discussion at AFCEA Bethesda’s 14th annual Health IT event on Feb. 1.”
“Mission Partner Focus
Rajiv Uppal, CIO at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said that senior IT officials within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have become more tightly integrated as partners in agency missions.”
“’There has been a change in the mindset that needed to happen on the IT and on the mission side,’ toward the goal of tighter integration, he said. In the past he said, perceptions on the mission side of an agency might have tended toward IT being a stumbling block, but that has evolved to IT saying, ‘we will work with you to solve your problems.'”
“’The way we have engaged with stakeholders, we have changed that model,’ Uppal said. ‘We are now sitting down with them and getting them to engage in our decision process … so they don’t feel that IT does what IT does, and they don’t have a say.’ He added, ‘we want to make it a combined joint effort.'”
“Discussing the same issue, Kshemendra Paul, chief data officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), said that the agency’s IT leaders ‘were at the table as a first-rank partner’ during VA’s pivot to offering telework and telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“He emphasized that IT work at VA is fully involved with data operations, and called the VA’s Veterans Health Administration component an ‘anchor tenant’ in that regard…” Read the full article here.
Source: Federal Health Agency IT Execs Discuss Mission, Design, Workforce Imperatives – By John Curran, February 2, 2022. MeriTalk.
