Administrative Support Assistant

Summary

The Administrative Support Assistant is located within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Medical Center (VAMC) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The mission of VHA is to honor America's veterans by providing exceptional health care that improves their health and wellbeing. South Texas Veterans Health Care System ( STVHCS) is an integrated system organized to provide comprehensive health care services to eligible veterans in South Texas.

Duties

Duties include but are not limited to: Coordinating daily operations of clinic services necessary to provide a continuum of care for veterans. Administration of the VA health care benefits and specialty evaluation program for primary care. Establishing and implementing contingency plans for ensuring patient receive continuity of and access to appropriate care during periods of inadequate resources, staff absences, staff turnover, understaffing, and nature-related events including but not limited to maintaining a cadre of qualified staff willing to provide coverage responsibilities on short notice continuous recruitment and hiring or staff; estimating future needs and predicting supply demand and assessing unmet staffing needs and gaps. Served as a contracting officer representative (COR) for all contracts pertaining to the OCP in primary care. Develop and implement controls verifying payments for service received are appropriate. Conduct negotiations make recommendations on contracts and other agreements prior to execution. Reviews and provide input on local issues or regulations policy and report related to primary care operations. Provides expert consultation to group practice manager on access procedures and systems to assure services provided nationally accepted standards that are at least equal to those available in the community and are maximally cost effective. Integrate VHA system performance measures and goal into ambulatory care system processes. Educate staff on performance goals and implement clinic process changes to meet goals such as screening tools, medical record template changes, change in clinic schedules, etc. Ensures record management guidelines are adhered to in the clinic setting. Coordinate efforts to ensure patient concerns are received, evaluated, and addressed in a timely and efficient manner by the appropriate subject matter expert. Analyze clinic patient feedback for access and quality measure. Establish benchmark and a process for taking corrective actions on decreasing/low scores in Veteran/Staff experience data. Establishes communication plan with the clinic teams relating to the plan of action in accordance with the Veterans experience data. Assist that GPM in integrating data and analytics and measures with continuous process improvement utilizing LEAN, SIX Sigma and other improvement methodologies to meet and sustain ambulatory care goes and objectives. Utilize evidence access principles to improve workflow. Assist in developing sustainment and continuous improvement plans for clinic teams; and presents continuous improvement plans to leadership, noting resource implications of recommendations. Works with the service line of engineering, logistics, and Contracting Officer to manage clinic building operation. Serves as member or chair on board of survey investigations. Works with service of OIT so oversee and monitor clinic information technology usage and project capability requirements. Develop project proposals and reports, based on finding to brief leadership and make recommendations regarding system-wide operations. Coordinate with the group practice manager to predict and manage surges for purchase care. Assists and support clinical and administrative leads in implementing actions designed to improve operations. Analyze workload and develop action plans that will enable clinical grids to accurately reflect supply. Uses advanced principles and strategies for Access Improvement to identify strategies to improve effectiveness or reduce backlog. Overseas and monitor consultant management issues and provide guidance to clinical and administrative staff. Develops both long and short-range policies and plans for the organization by coordinating the medical administrative needs of the clinic. Work in partnership with the GPM to develop and maintain proper clinic utilization for complex outpatient clinics. Analyze historical access and population data and coordinate ambulatory care medical administration needs for incorporation into operational plans. Makes recommendations regarding primary care and specialty care demand not met and/or projected growth along with resources recommendation for in-house and purchase care. Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 8:00am to 4:30pm. Telework: This position may be authorized for telework on a Ad-Hoc basis. Telework eligibility will be discussed during the interview process. Virtual: This is not a virtual position. Position Description/PD#: Administrative Support Assistant/PD01199A Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized Critical Skills Incentive (CSI): Not Approved Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized

Qualifications

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 10/15/2026. 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-07 position you must have served 52 weeks at the GS-06. 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. You may qualify based on your experience as described below: Specialized Experience: You must have one year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade GS-06 in the normal line of progression for the occupation in the organization. Examples of specialized experience would typically include, but are not limited to: Knowledge of a full range of functional areas such as purchasing, supply management, records management, travel and related administrative areas to ensure compliance with established policies, practices, procedures, and controls; Ability to identify problem and potential problem areas based on daily observance or studies; Analyze and measure the effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of administrative programs; Develop written and oral recommendations for improvement; Knowledge of administrative concepts, principles, and practices sufficient to foresee problems and perform studies designed to evaluate procedures/processes; Knowledge of tools, concepts and methodologies of Quality Assurance; Attention to detail, data collection, management and analysis problem solving. For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/.

Education

There is no educational substitution at this grade level.