DSS Help Desk Enables VHA Innovation Success
This is the eighth in a series of blog posts highlighting DSS’ experience and success stories supporting the VA and improving Veteran care and outcomes.
With healthcare IT systems evolving in technical complexity, the ability to quickly and accurately resolve any challenging technical issues is vital for the VA to best leverage innovations in ways that enhance the quality of care for Veterans.
DSS has a legacy of offering specialized and unique support for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Unlike a typical call center, our Service Desk is comprised of certified IT and Clinical professionals that work over 20,000 cases annually. In addition, with case volume growing approximately 18 percent each year, our staffing approach has the capacity to absorb and support future VHA software and system sustainment.
The key to DSS’ support success comes down to our experience working with the VA, which brings a level of confidence and experience that exceeds other vendors.
Thanks to our experience in VistA application development, COTS integrations, and commercial VistA implementations, we can resolve many questions without the need to escalate to the second level development team. We also have experience in more than 30 different VA domains – through building 70+ unique software offerings to supply over 40 percent of the available VA APIs for those domain areas.
Here are some proof points about high-performance help desk capabilities:
DSS resolves reported incidents 95 percent of the time without external escalation, which is 18 percent better than the national average according to the Helpdesk Institute (HDI).
In terms of customer satisfaction with the VA, DSS scores at 96.4 percent annually, which far exceeds the national average of 83.6 percent annually.
DSS has surpassed the 90 percent Defect Removal Efficiency (DRE) mark, which is the percentage of the bugs identified and corrected internally compared to the total bugs in the complete release life cycle.
Focusing on achieving mission success is paramount for VA leaders, and technical issues should not be roadblocks to long-term success. This is why DSS is proud to continue its legacy of providing seamless support that allows the agency to best meet Veteran care needs.