Credentialing Update: Dr. Lembo

Dr. Lembo expressed interest in learning more about the process of credentialing short-term physician in-rotators to the NIH at the level of the Institutes and Centers. He has an understanding of the process for credentialing of these rotators in the NIH Clinical Center, but because of concerns expressed by NIH graduate medical education program directors on how long it takes to bring on these short term clinical rotators he is asking about Institution or Center-specific policies and procedures that govern the credentialing process. Currently, we have short term rotators at NIH from graduate medical education programs at Washington Hospital Center, Georgetown University, and the Children's Medical Center, for example, who are typically here for 1 or 2 months and then return to their home training programs. There have been reports describing an increased lag time to get these fellows on board to permit both patient care and training activities in a timely manner.

1. Dr. Lembo's goal is to increase the profile of the NIH as a desirable site for clinical in-rotators from other training programs to do electives in our graduate medical education programs, and to look for ways to streamline the process for credentialing, especially for short term rotations, in order not to increase the work load for administrators.

2. Currently it takes at least 4 to 6 weeks for credentialing packets for in-rotators to be processed and in some circumstances up to 12 weeks; in addition, each NIH institute varies with their own timeframes to complete credentialing packages.

3. Action- Dr. Lembo would like the IAO group to seek guidance from their Clinical Directors and the Program Support Staff employees who prepare these packages to find out what they feel is the cause of the lag time in bringing these fellows on board. Donna Siegle will send Dr. Lembo the paperwork that is required to bring on a special volunteer.

Presentation on GovWorks: Teresa Rivera & Jennifer Cera

GovWorks is a One Team One Purpose Federal Acquisition Center. They provide a full service acquisition center for the US Department of Interior and they serve all federal agencies.

Benefits of using GovWorks: provides effective acquisition from start to finish, uses a wide variety of government contract vehicles to exhibit the best value, performance based contracting, and green procurement. GovWorks uses an e-invoicing system that is fast, accurate, reduces interest costs, and avoids the burden of manual invoicing. You can review and approve all invoices over a secure web portal, which is available 24/7, and all vendor invoicing is handled online as well.

Procedures are streamlined: the customer discusses the need with the contracting officer, submits the IAA, provides the statement of work within 90 days, signs agreement, assigns a COTR, participates in the selection process, and communicates with the contracting officer.

Finally, the deadline for accepting 07' funds is September 17. 2007. However, you do not need to start the award prior to the end of the fiscal year. You must submit your statement of work within 90 days.

Further information can be found on: http:\\govworks.gov

Capital HR/Exit Survey Update: Jennifer Burton

Jennifer advised the group that the Strategic Programs Divsion is working to redesign the current procedure for the Exit Survey and is requesting IC feedback to better their procedures for exit interviews. Currently, the exit survey is being sent out via the WiTS resignation process which means that sometimes it is sent after the employee has already left the NIH and this is resulting in a low completion rate. Questions will be composed differently depending on the appointment mechanism, i.e., Non-FTE and contractor questions would be different compared to FTE questions. The email requesting AO feedback will be sent out in the coming weeks.

Additionally, EHRP is becoming Capital HR. The date the deployment of Capital HR has been pushed back and no date has been decided as of today due to additional HHS testing of the system. The group expressed the need for the deployment to become effective 9/30/07, but Jennifer stated that the date will be driven by HHS. As soon as the date is available, it will be sent via Listserv to all current EHRP users, and information will be posted in the HR Systems Spotlight and on the Portal and Web.

Furthermore, Questions and Answers from the Capital HR session last week will be posted on the portal page.

Administrative Survey Update: Ellen Rolfes, Danielle Buice

Ellen presented a new workload (administrative) study that will be managed by Danielle Buice. The study will involve all functions of the Administrative Officer's position and will include the following functional areas: the number of AOs per institute, the size of the institute, how many intramural employees handled by each AO, how the work has been distributed, and what functions are performed in each intramural administrative office (e.g., budget, renovations, space, etc.).

Action- Susan will send the group the workload survey that was done 5 or 6 years ago that Danielle can use as a template.

Action - Danielle will send out a solicitation to the IAOs on what type of information they would like to see presented in the study. Once this has been completed, Danielle will send out the draft questionnaire for input.

Once the survey is finalized and sent out to the IAMC, Danielle will request additional support to consolidate the information into a useable and helpful format. We will most likely convene focus groups. Gwen recommended that her IC AFP could assist Danielle.

Open Discussion:

Donna Siegle advised the group of a few NBS updates from Valerie Rovine.

IC specific training session dates our beginning next week and will continue throughout the end of the month.

Valerie has agreed to provide an NBS brown bag session detailing the end of year closeout possibly on August 15th. More information will follow in the next few days.

There will be another NBS brown bag session to include unpaid invoicing presented by Priscilla Irick on August 9th; more info to follow shortly.