Maria Price Detherage is the Director of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Strategic Programs in the Assistant Secretary for Administration, Office of Human Resources. In this capacity, she works to enhance HHS programs internally and to expand on its presence and impact with other federal agencies as well as the private sector and academia by providing oversight for the Department’s Strategic Human Capital Management, Employment Policy and Accountability, Recruitment and Diversity Outreach, and HR Data Analytics and Reporting. She returned to OHR in December of 2010.
Prior to her return to HR, she was appointed in August of 2005 to serve as the first Executive Director for one of HHS’ newest Staff Division, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA). On July 1, 2005, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) opened its doors to the American public to conduct nationwide hearings for the Medicare program. OMHA provides an independent forum for the fair and efficient adjudication of Medicare appeals for beneficiaries and other parties. This mission is carried out by a cadre of over sixty (60) Administrative Law Judges exercising judicial and decisional independence with the support of a professional legal and administrative staff. In this process, beneficiaries are able to get health care faster with more consistent coverage determinations – thus reducing time and waste in the Medicare program and, therefore, producing a dramatic improvement in the American health care delivery system.
As the Executive Director for OMHA, Maria provided executive leadership, guidance and oversight in the areas of management ranging from policy development and implementation on Medicare appeals procedures, to human capital, ethics, personnel security, training and development, national policy, COOP and presidential mandates.
Prior to August 2005, Maria was the Director of Labor and Employee Relations Programs for HHS. In that capacity, she provided corporate oversight for the labor relations (LR) and employee relations (ER) policies and programs at HHS and was intricately involved in the planning, strategy, and execution of most of the Department’s major initiatives affecting numerous HHS Agencies - e.g., the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), and Indian Health Service (IHS). In 2005, she also wrote the “HHS Rural Outreach Strategy” as part of her SES Candidacy Development Program rotation with the HHS Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and White House Liaison.
Maria began her federal career in 1989 as a Graduate Fellow in HHS’s Center for Management Excellence where she served as an internal consultant to the Department’s policy arm on Equal Employment Opportunity and Labor Relations. She received a Collective Bargaining Official’s Citation for serving as the Department’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR) management representative on the federal government’s first term contract negotiating teams using Interest Based Negotiations. She has served in numerous capacities since then. She has also served as a mentor to several in the HHS Senior Executive Service (SES) Candidate Development Program, Emerging Leaders Program, and Department-wide Mentor Program.
Maria holds Masters of Science in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and a Bachelors of Science in Psychology with a concentration in Group Dynamics. She has taught “Effective Management Tools and Techniques for the year 2000 and beyond” at the USDA Graduate School. Maria is a trained mediator, facilitator and certified arbitrator with the Better Business Bureau. She is a member of HHS’s Senior Executive Service (SES), the Federal Executive Institute Alumni Association, the American Association of Arbitrators and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. She has also been recognized in the “1999 Edition of “International Who’s Who of Professionals” and serves on the Executive Board of the Executive Women’s Golf Association, Southern Maryland Tri-County Chapter, as Vice President and Leadership Chair.