A new credential is available for defense financial managers

Terry Gerton: You’ve got some exciting news. You’re starting a new credential, Certified Defense Financial Manager Health Care. Why now?

Rich Brady: Well, thank you, great question. This actually goes back about two or three years. When I first came to the Society of Defense Financial Management, we started looking at our certification program and wanting to build it out. We’ve got the core certification, the CDFM, and we have the acquisition specialty, the CDFM-A. And so our business strategy around the certifications was to build more dashes in areas that we knew were unique to defense financial management. One of those areas is health care. It’s a growth industry. We know that there’s about a $60 billion budget in the Defense Health Agency that needs to be managed by a cadre of skilled and certified financial managers.

Terry Gerton: So as someone who’s been around the defense financial management space for a long time, I’m wondering what is so different about health care financial management?

Rich Brady: Well, some of the basics are the same. You’re capturing, recording and reporting of financial information — that’s all the same — but there are some unique features of defense health care financial management that really drove the need for this certification. And there’s things like revenue cycle management, Medicare and Medicaid billing, agreements with insurance companies. If you’re out in the operating forces or you’re just working in the Pentagon in defense financial management, you’re not going to have to deal with those things. But people within the military health system, within the Defense Health Agency, they deal with those on a day-to-day basis.

Terry Gerton: You’re thinking not just TRICARE and Defense Health, but VA and Veterans Health?

Rich Brady: Absolutely. This could go much broader than just the Defense Health Agency, and we’ve tried to bring the VA along in this. If you look at, for example, MHS Genesis, the end-to-end health care system that’s being rolled out, this is linking both DHA and VHA together. And so this certification that we have, the CDFM-H, really applies equally to people in the Defense Health Agency as much as it does in the Veterans Health Agency, as well as people who work in the Pentagon who may be just budget analysts or program analysts that have defense health under their purview.

Terry Gerton: Might it be something that is ultimately portable into the civilian base as well?

Rich Brady: Yes. As you know, the defense financial management field is broad and diverse. It’s not just people who work in government, either in uniform or a civilian capacity, but there’s a whole cadre of contractors and corporate people who support it as well. So we estimate that there are 10,000 to 15,000 people who are supporting defense health care financial management in both the government side and the commercial side. So that’s our target market for this certification.

Terry Gerton: So you’ve got a big potential market out there. What are the different criteria or curriculum components of this certification that make it different from your existing ones?

Rich Brady: Broadly, there’s kind of four areas in this certification. Obviously, strategic planning — kind of the highest level — how do you plan for and execute resources within the defense health care system? We go into operational tasks. We talk management controls. Management controls are not unique to defense health, but you may need some additional controls given some of, again, the revenue cycle and Medicare and Medicaid billing practices. And finally, leadership. Leadership is a component to all, and that includes ethics as well.

Terry Gerton: Earning the credential, what’s going to be entailed in that?

Rich Brady: It’s a two-hour exam with 90 questions. But first and foremost, you have to hold the CDFM, the base certification. You have to be a CDFM holder to sit for the CDFM-H exam. And once you complete that two-hour exam and pass the 90-question test, you will be a CDFM-H holder.

Terry Gerton: So I couldn’t come in and take it cold. I’d probably need some coursework before I could come in and sit for the exam.

Rich Brady: Yes, exactly. And we are working closely with DHA on the development of course material for it. The blueprint is out there and it’s available for everybody who’s interested in this, and it even provides resources that you can go to. But we are working to develop a specific training course, a prep course for this exam. And I will say also that we have partnered from the beginning on this with the Defense Health Agency. We’ve relied on their subject matter expertise, their review to help build the content outline and develop exam questions for this.

Terry Gerton: It’s good to know that they’re on board. I’m speaking with Rich Brady. He’s the CEO of the Society for Defense Financial Management. So I’m imagining, in the same way that you get a prep book for taking a college entrance exam, at some point, there will be that kind of study on your own, perhaps?

Rich Brady: Yes. We generally have three components to our exams. One is a self-study program — a book that you can purchase and just study on your own. There will also be an actual course, likely a three-day course that you could go through. It will be instructor-led and they’ll guide you through basically the book, answer questions for you and go through exercises. And finally, we have a mobile test prep app where you can, just as you’re sitting on the Metrobus or sitting around at home, do practice tests right there on your phone.

Terry Gerton: Well, that’s really cool — very modern deployment of that. Where are you in the process? What’s required to get this ready to be credentialed?

Rich Brady: The exam is already out there. We’re still in the pilot phase, so if people want to take it, if they qualify, they can take it for free right now. We go through about a three-month pilot phase just to make sure that the scoring is accurate and everything. But if you do pass it right now, you are a full certificate holder. And so you will achieve the certificate whether you take the pilot test or once we launch the fully approved test in about three months. Either way, the advantage of taking it right now — again — it’s free during this phase.

Terry Gerton: And it could count if I pass it, right?

Rich Brady: Absolutely.

Terry Gerton: So you mentioned a really broad market. Are there particular practitioners in this space that would be your first targets for getting this credential?

Rich Brady: Absolutely. And that’s really who the DHA financial management leadership was targeting — those who are in comptroller positions in the military treatment facilities — because what they are working to do is upskill their workforce and identify people who have the knowledge, skills and abilities to work in defense health care financial management. So if you had this certification and, let’s say, you were working for the Army in the Pentagon, they could identify you as somebody who could potentially fill a billet in a military treatment facility as a comptroller.

Terry Gerton: So how are you getting the word out to all of those people besides this story?

Rich Brady: This story, obviously. The press release and hard social media push — a lot out on social media. It drives everybody right back to our webpage, the SDFM.org website, where they can get all the information they need — everything from the exam blueprint to how to sign up for the exam and the particulars about the qualification requirements.

Terry Gerton: It seems like this is a really timely innovation. What else is up your sleeve with SDFM?

Rich Brady: Thank you for asking. So in the certification area specifically, this is the first new “dash” certification we’ve started in over 15 years. But our plan — you can think we could go in a lot of different areas: fiscal law, data analytics, working capital funds. So we’re looking at all of those areas. Probably the next one out the gate is going to be data analytics because of the demand for that in our field.

Terry Gerton: Wow. Just give me a hint of what that might look like.

Rich Brady: Another 90-question, two-hour exam that, if you’re a CDFM holder, you could take. This exam really drills down into how to execute data analytics in support of defense financial management.

Terry Gerton: Well, there’s certainly no shortage of data. The question is whether or not it’s accessible to be analyzed.

Rich Brady: Well, maybe that’s the department’s problem to solve and not ours. We’re just going to give people the tools to analyze the data once they have it.