Director of Daily Operations & Customer Applications

VITL is legislatively designated to operate the Vermont Health Information Exchange (VHIE), a secure, statewide health information exchange. VITL gives health care organizations in Vermont care providers the ability to electronically exchange and access their patients’ health information in order to improve the quality, safety, and cost of patient care.

Since 2005, VITL has collected, matched, and standardized patient data from health care organizations across the state, including hospitals, primary and specialty care providers, Federally Qualified Health Centers, home health providers, nursing homes, commercial labs, and others.

The data is delivered to stakeholders, including participating health care organizations, to inform providers’ point-of-care decisions; to the Vermont Blueprint for Health for their work to improve and reform care; and to the Vermont Department of Health to support public health efforts in service of all Vermonters.

Job Summary

Reporting to the CEO, the Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications is a member of VITL’s senior leadership team and collaborates to successfully deliver VITL’s mission, vision, strategic plan, and contractual commitments.  The Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications contributes to VITL’s standing as a leading health information exchange (HIE) and serve as a valued thought partner to the CEO and the senior leadership team; preparing for and ensuring the seamless implementation of technology enhancements and solutions (e.g. new integrations, application version updates, new service deployments, etc.) and ensuring VITL services are meeting the established standards of utility and warranty, delivering value promised to stakeholders.

The Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications has expert knowledge in the principles, policies and practices of data services management and operations, policy development and implementation, and budget development and administration.   The Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications possesses a broad knowledge of exchange standards and initiatives that advance health data interoperability and is responsible for staying ahead of health information technology innovation; designing and implementing short- and long-term operations strategy; mentoring and managing the operations team ensuring the integrity and on-going stability of the network, and applications that enable VITL services.

The individual must understand the health information technology environment and will proactively monitor and evaluate changes and opportunities in the interoperability landscape to help define VITL’s strategic roadmap and priorities.  The position will have significant experience in collaborating with and educating key stakeholders to help shape interoperability initiatives in Vermont.

The Director will be comfortable representing health information exchange to stakeholders, including the Legislature, state agencies, and state-designated boards. The Director may represent VITL on State committees and subcommittees as needed and work closely with stakeholders as required such as DVHA, Blueprint, VDH, and other external organizations.

The Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications will work to understand the needs of clients and the technical solutions available, applying industry best practices and standards. The role ensures that operations activities and initiatives are aligned with VITL business strategy and priorities. The Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications assists in technical architecture decisions of the VHIE to ensure functionality and integrity of the system is maintained.

The Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications exercises responsibilities and skills at SFIA level 5 (Skills Framework for the Information Age):

Autonomy Works under broad direction. Work is often self-initiated. Is fully responsible for meeting allocated technical and/or project/supervisory objectives. Establishes milestones and has a significant role in the assignment of tasks and/or responsibilities.
Influence Influences organization, customers, suppliers, partners and peers on the contribution of own specialism. Builds appropriate and effective business relationships. Makes decisions which impact the success of assigned work, i.e. results, deadlines and budget. Has significant influence over the allocation and management of resources appropriate to given assignments. Leads on user/customer collaboration throughout all stages of work. Ensures users’ needs are met consistently through each work stage.
Complexity Performs an extensive range and variety of complex technical and/or professional work activities. Undertakes work which requires the application of fundamental principles in a wide and often unpredictable range of contexts. Understands the relationship between own specialism and wider customer/organizational requirements.
Knowledge Is fully familiar with recognized industry bodies of knowledge both generic and specific. Actively seeks out new knowledge for own personal development and the mentoring or coaching of others. Develops a wider breadth of knowledge across the industry or business. Applies knowledge to help to define the standards which others will apply.
Business skills Demonstrates leadership. Communicates effectively, both formally and informally. Facilitates collaboration between stakeholders who have diverse objectives.

Analyses, designs, plans, executes and evaluates work to time, cost and quality targets. Analyses requirements and advises on scope and options for continuous operational improvement. Takes all requirements into account when making proposals. Demonstrates creativity, innovation and ethical thinking in applying solutions for the benefit of the customer/stakeholder

Advises on the available standards, methods, tools and applications relevant to own specialism and can make appropriate choices from alternatives.

Maintains an awareness of developments in the industry. Takes initiative to keep skills up to date. Mentors colleagues. Assesses and evaluates risk.

Proactively ensures security is appropriately addressed within their area by self and others. Engages or works with security specialists as necessary. Contributes to the security culture of the organization.

 Principal Responsibilities

Independent judgment and initiative are important and valued but must never result in operational silos or sub-optimization within the organization.  Frequent communication with other VITL leaders is essential to ensure that the leadership team is united in expectations and execution.

The ideal candidate will be prepared to step outside of traditional job boundaries to meet the needs of the moment in support of VITL’s mission and therefore must be flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances.  A strong work ethic and ability to work well within a team are essential.  The ideal candidate must have strong computer skills and excellent verbal and written communication skills, be exceedingly well organized, attentive to detail, flexible, proactive, resourceful and efficient, and must remain poised and composed under pressure and maintain utmost confidentiality and professionalism in handling protected health information and information which is proprietary and confidential to VITL’s suppliers and technology partners.  VITL seeks candidates who are committed to lifelong learning and growth.

With principal offices located in Williston, Vermont, VITL is a remote-first organization.

Responsibilities of this position include:

  • In managing the Daily Operations and Customer Applications team, oversee all operations and maintenance activities, including day-to-day operation activities associated with enabling and delivering services to VITL stakeholders.
  • Provide consultative resources to ensure operational solutions align with the stated business problems that are intended to be addressed.
  • Obtain and maintain a broad understanding of the currently applied technologies, data models, application functionality, development processes, and project management tools for all VITL Services (e.g. HL7 versions 2.x, 3.x , HL7 FHIR STU 3 and version 4, Cloud Technologies (Primarily AWS and Azure), SQL/Related databases, , Various Internet Protocols (TCP/IP, SFTP, HTTPS/TLS/SSL, SSH, various VPNs)).
  • Ensuring a focus on providing excellent customer service for all internal and external customers.
  • Partnering with the leadership team to ensure that projects and initiatives are aligned to strategic goals and customer needs, allocating team resources accordingly.
  • Building and maintaining relationships with coworkers, clients and stakeholders
  • In collaboration with the Director of Network and Technology Solutions, Project Management, Client Services and other teams, plan and execute the production deployment providing technical expertise as needed to ensure a smooth transition.
  • Provide oversight of HL7 interface implementations and data integrations
  • Develop and maintain the VHIE Connectivity Criteria as part of the overall Vermont HIE Strategic Plan.
  • Contribute to VHIE performance metrics, and assist Leadership in defining and generating reports as necessary
  • Develop relationships with clients in conjunction with Leadership to document VITL IT roadmap
  • Develop and maintain peer relationships with successful HIEs, ACOs, and hospitals nationally to share, assess and implement best practices.
  • Lead in the maintenance and enhancement of the technology infrastructure of the VHIE and maintain human resource capabilities that encourage employee satisfaction, engagement, retention, and diversity:
    • Automated Service and Systems monitoring.
    • Periodic data quality audits for all data received by VITL.
    • Incident resolution monitoring and metrics.
  • Serve as the leader of VITL’s Operations team
    • Assist the VITL leadership team in defining and implementing automated, metrics-focused, and proactive methods for monitoring all aspects of the service lifecycle and service delivery with an initial focus on service operations.
    • Mentor VITL team members and other healthcare community members to support VITL and VITL’s services as appropriate.
    • Enable monitoring activities and key metrics constituting VITL’s configuration management approach, ensuring capacity of key components of VITL’s infrastructure are not over capacitated, working closely with the director of Security, Risk and Resilience;
    • As it pertains to demand and capacity management, make certain that the growth of the network is coordinated with the growth of network components to ensure VITL’s services are not negatively impacted as VITL’s business grows (for the sake of clarity the actual enhancement of components would most likely be executed by a supplier, VITL technology team or some other entity);
    • Oversee VITL’s reporting function to ensure compliance with contract deliverables and support VITL’s need for data to effectively run the business and plan for near and long-term needs of the business;
    • Enable a professional and customer-oriented approach to incident and request management supporting customers of VITL’s core services, including but not limited to:
      • VITLAccess, the online portal for accessing longitudinal health records;
      • VITLResults, VITL’s Results Delivery systems based on Health Catalyst and Rhapsody Integration engine;
      • VITLAlerts, Care Coordination (events, clinical values and clinical results)
      • VITLInsights, Data Analytics and Extracts
  • Oversee general and administrative activities to ensure effective and efficient operations
    • Actively participate in and support ongoing strategic planning efforts.
    • Develop and manage activities that are aligned to and in support of VITL’s strategic plan.
    • Attend and support meetings of the Board of Directors and appropriate board committees.
    • Maintain and ensure compliance with procurement policies and practices that enable good stewardship of organizational resources and encourage diversity of suppliers.
    • Demonstrate and model a strong customer service commitment, internally and externally.
    • Manage, support, and ensure ongoing development of all direct reports and team members.
    • Regularly identify and implement opportunities to improve department and organization efficiency and effectiveness.
    • Other duties as assigned.

Supervision Received

  • The position reports to the Chief Executive Officer

Supervision Exercised

  • Position supervises members of the Operations team (4).
  • Take ownership of VITL operations initiatives, coordinate resource assignments with the team and guide initiatives through to successful completion.
  • Guide large cross team efforts through influence and leadership.
  • Coach and educate other team members in operational best practices and how this enables excellence in the delivery of VITL services and generating value for VITL stakeholders.

Job Impact

  • Work performed in this position impacts thousands of users of the VITL network across the entire state of Vermont and into bordering states.
  • Timeline of work assigned is usually weeks to months, and special projects may be assigned with a timeline of 7 to 12 months to completion.
  • This position will help define technical budgets for hardware and software needed to implement new capabilities.

Key Competencies

The following are the minimal knowledge, skills and abilities which the Director of Daily Operations and Customer Applications must possess:

  • Understanding of the fundamentals of IT systems, networks and operations is required.
  • Understanding of project management concepts and practices.  Knowledge of ITIL best practices is a plus.
  • Knowledge of common system development methodologies and lifecycles is required.
  • Understanding of the intricacies involved in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), HL7, FHIR and HIT standards.
  • Demonstrated skill in technical communications to a diverse group of stakeholders.
  • Effective communication skills to negotiate solutions and alternatives.
  • Ability to define problems, draw conclusions and recommend solutions.
  • Ability to mediate among stakeholder groups and individuals to resolve conflicts and disagreements.
  • Ability to focus and manage time in a fast-paced and deadline-driven environment.
  • Possess a general understanding of healthcare workflow dynamics and how they relate to utilization of VITL services.
  • The successful candidate must be organized, detail-oriented, flexible and comfortable working in a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

  • At least seven years of experience in information technology within the healthcare industry or other industries of similar size and complexity.
  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science or information technology is preferred; Equivalent work experience will be considered.
  • VITL expects employees to be certified in ITIL Foundations or commit to becoming certified within the first year of employment. This is a condition of employment.

VITL is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination or harassment of any kind. We are committed to compliance with all applicable fair employment practices laws and a policy of equal opportunity without regard to race, gender, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, place of birth, crime victim status, ancestry, physical or mental condition, disability, pregnancy, citizenship or immigration status, status as a veteran, military service or obligation, a positive test result from an HIV-related blood test, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by such laws (“Protected Characteristics”). VITL’s policy of anti-discrimination applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including but not limited to recruiting, hiring, training, compensation, benefits, advancement, and termination of employment. VITL prohibits and does not tolerate discrimination against any employee, applicant, worker, or service provider on the basis of any Protected Characteristic.

Salary Range

The approved salary range for this full time, benefited position is $150-170K annually.

Apply

Interested candidates may submit a cover letter and resume to hr@vitl.net. Please mention “Director of Daily Operations & Customer Applications” in the subject line of your email.