September is National Preparedness Month and while the Atlantic Hurricane Season is unusually quiet, there are a disquieting number of potential crises out there on the horizon. From measles outbreaks in 45 states to a new flu season just around the corner, many of these likely crises fall on the shoulders of federal healthcare agencies.
During the 2020 global pandemic, federal healthcare agencies executed on a real-time crisis coordinating information dissemination, care, and vaccine dispersal in coordination with state and local agencies. While so much was learned from the pandemic response about the importance of data in delivering a successful response, much has changed in the nearly seven years since.
Recently, Corinna Dan – a veteran of the pandemic response as a frontline nurse and Department of Health and Human Services team member – talked with MeriTV’s Gail Emery about how federal healthcare agencies can build an always-ready preparedness posture. Dan, who is now Managing Director of Federal Health at Maximus, focused on three key areas during the conversation – data readiness, security, and contracting – that can help federal healthcare agencies move at the speed of need during critical moments.
Data Readiness
To be ready for a crisis, Dan noted that being able to operationalize data from numerous, disparate sources enables cross-functional and cross-agency teams to improve their response time and build trust with an uncertain public. “Recent experience … has shown us that federal agencies have to work as fast as they can to respond to public health issues,” Dan explained. “One thing [agencies can do] is to have their operational model set up for speed, so that speed isn’t the exception and they’re ready to go at a moment’s notice.” Having a data infrastructure that’s built for speed ensures that data can be decision maker ready.
But federal healthcare agencies are only partially responsible for emergency or crisis response. For comprehensive responses, federal agencies can lead, but data needs to be shared across federal, state, and local agencies to provide a comprehensive response that gets resources to citizens quickly. To make data interoperable, federal healthcare agencies should work with their state and local government counterparts to establish governance rules and build playbooks that not only operationalize the data during a crisis but allow for continuous testing of processes. “Public health has really struggled with … interoperability … a lot of it comes down to not having consistent funding,” Dan explained. “But when we modernize data, we can bring it all together, compare apples to apples, have dashboards, and data analytics forecasting … and really show leadership what may happen based on data coming in, in a much more contemporary way.”
Embrace Security
Two of the most attractive targets for cyber attackers, be they criminals or nation-state actors, are healthcare data and the federal government. So, inevitably, federal healthcare agencies are a top target for these bad actors. Moreover, in the years since the last major public healthcare crisis, the introduction of AI tools and the operationalization of data by large language models has increased not only the amount of data that’s available, but also the surface area for attacks.
Federal healthcare agencies have been diligent about building with FedRAMP approved solutions, but Dan noted that Zero Trust architecture, and state-of-the-art threat hunting tools are fundamental to data and application security today. “Having folks trained in advance to understand what security looks like but also having a continuity plan for your operations [is imperative],” Dan noted. Another security best practice that Dan highlighted was redundancy, and specifically geographical redundancy. “It helps a lot to have redundant systems, to have geographic redundancy so that if there’s an attack in one location you have the data somewhere else that can be accessed to help leaders make decisions but to also ensure patient safety.”
Contracting Options
Dan’s final key area to crisis preparedness was for federal healthcare agencies to know their contracting options in advance. “Done right,” she explained “contracting can accelerate response.” As a former contract officer representative at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dan has first-hand experience in understanding the complexity of contracting vehicles and how they can slow response time during a crisis because the time to move from concept to contract is too long.
However, Dan was quick to point out the ways in which agencies can pre-plan to mitigate these contracting challenges. “There are a number of things that agencies can do to expedite those contracting pathways,” she shared. “[A] lot of this is pre-planning … putting in place contracts that can be more flexible like IDIQs and BPAs that really enable federal staff to customize a task order for the emerging threat.” And above else, Dan emphasized building close relationships with trusted partners in the private sector. “The relationship between federal agency leadership and vendor partners is also critical so that you understand when there’s a threat what partners have a specific capability that you’re going to need,” she continued. “Similarly public-private partnerships are going to fill … a different need, with folks who are on the ground, who have aligned missions, and understand what the mission of the agency is … and what the operational realities are.”
Federal healthcare agencies will always face competing priorities, from day-to-day mission delivery to modernization demands and evolving threats. But emergency readiness should not begin with a blank slate. By strengthening data readiness and interoperability, embracing security as a core operating principle, and setting up contracting options before a crisis emerges, agencies can establish the foundation needed to move faster, coordinate more effectively, and deliver support when communities need it most.
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