The broader IHS telehealth team behind the clinical video initiative RingMD supported received a 2022 IHS Director’s Award for Customer Service—a recognition of mission understanding, technical judgment, creative problem-solving, follow-through and performance that exceeds expectations.
Health technology is usually described through what can be seen.
A secure video connection. A clinician on screen. A patient joining from home. An administrator opening a dashboard. A platform working across devices.
The service surrounding that technology is less visible. Someone has to understand the user’s situation, determine whether the problem is technical or operational, coordinate the right people, explain the answer clearly and verify that the person can return to the task that matters.
Our work supporting the AA RingMD clinical video initiative contributed to the broader IHS telehealth effort honored in the 2022 Director’s Awards. We are proud of that role and of the operating discipline that makes secure technology dependable for the people using it.
In public health, dependable technology depends on dependable service.
What the Award Recognizes
The award recognized the broader IHS telehealth team and its work during 2022, including the clinical video initiative RingMD supported.
IHS held the 2022 IHS Director’s Awards Ceremony on December 8, 2023, honoring special efforts and contributions made during calendar year 2022. The award year refers to the work recognized; the ceremony followed the next year.
IHS described the recognized work as going beyond regular duty requirements and producing significant benefits for agency goals, programs, customers and fulfillment of the IHS mission. The ceremony included a dedicated Director’s Award for Customer Service category.
RingMD contributed to that broader IHS telehealth effort through our work supporting the AA RingMD clinical video telehealth platform. Federal delivery is a team undertaking: agency leaders, clinicians, technical teams and contractors all have to make the service work together.
The Customer Service category celebrates the same qualities that shaped RingMD’s work: technical understanding, creative problem-solving and reliable follow-through.
Customer service is a delivery discipline
The IHS criteria for the Director’s Award for Customer Service begin with purpose. The award recognizes service that significantly advances the IHS mission, vision, strategic goals and objectives. It is intended for innovation, exceptional performance or exemplary action that produces quality service for IHS customers, stakeholders or partners.
For RingMD, that definition makes customer service an essential part of technology delivery.
At RingMD, customer service is how a user’s need becomes an owned response. Our teams learn the operating context, find the cause of the problem, bring in the right specialists and stay accountable until the user can proceed.
In federal healthcare, the “customer” may be a clinician, support professional, administrator, program owner, technical team or partner organization. Each sees a different part of the system. Reliable service connects those perspectives without asking the user to navigate the vendor’s internal structure.
Excellent service means the response helps the agency and its users carry out their work.
Technical understanding changes the answer
IHS expressly includes technical understanding in its award criteria. The agency looks for capability and imagination in devising creative solutions to challenging customer problems.
That is a demanding service standard for health technology.
A clinician who cannot begin a telehealth encounter may describe one symptom: “The call is not working.” The underlying cause could involve identity, permissions, a browser setting, a device, bandwidth, local configuration, a platform condition or an unfamiliar workflow. A generic instruction may consume time without restoring access.
Useful support has to translate the user’s description into a structured assessment. What changed? Who is affected? Does audio work? Is the issue local or widespread? Can the encounter continue appropriately through another supported mode? Does the event raise a security or privacy concern? Which team owns the next action?
Our technical depth helps us move quickly from symptom to resolution, and our teams adapt when real operating conditions differ from a test environment. Every solution still has to stay within approved clinical, privacy and security boundaries.
The right response solves the immediate problem while protecting security, privacy and the clinical workflow.
Follow-through closes the accountability loop
The IHS criteria also emphasize fully understanding the customer’s situation, seeking an effective way to address the need and following up to ensure that the need has been met. Performance, the agency states, should clearly exceed expectations.
Follow-through is easy to promise and difficult to systematize.
A ticket can be marked resolved when a password is reset, an instruction is sent or a defect is assigned. The user’s task may still be incomplete. The clinician may not have rejoined. The administrator may not know whether other sites are affected. The same friction may remain for the next person.
Closing the accountability loop requires a different question: could the user return to the work they were trying to perform?
We measure whether the user’s work was restored, not simply whether a ticket was answered. That distinction reveals recurring patterns, helps training, documentation, configuration and product design improve together, and makes escalation more precise.
Follow-through turns service from a sequence of individual conversations into an operating control.
The platform entered a demanding environment
On October 31, 2022, IHS announced the availability of AA RingMD clinical video telehealth across IHS federal facilities. The secure cloud-based system supported patient-to-provider and provider-to-provider meetings.
IHS identified AA RingMD as the first telehealth-focused platform the agency had deployed. The platform complemented Webex, giving the agency two secure telehealth options within its broader environment.
The operating conditions were equally important. IHS said the system could be used across multiple devices and for visits in homes or schools with low broadband availability. It described encrypted audio and video, patient consent, identity verification and rules prohibiting session recording by providers.
That environment asks more of our service. Device flexibility creates more joining conditions. Low-bandwidth access creates more variability. Security rules require clear user guidance. A platform that complements another service must have an understandable role.
RingMD supplied the secure clinical video capability, and our service helped people use it within the operating environment IHS defined.
Scale requires disciplined measurement
In 2022, IHS served approximately 2.7 million American Indian and Alaska Native people across 574 federally recognized Tribes in 37 states.
For RingMD, that nationwide reach meant supporting a telehealth platform across facilities with different devices, connections, clinical settings and staff experience.
The Director’s Award is meaningful to us because it recognized customer service across the broader telehealth effort that included our platform work.
At this scale, national consistency and local responsiveness have to work together.
We brought that discipline to implementation, user support and day-to-day operations.
That experience strengthened RingMD’s ability to deliver secure, responsive technology in a complex federal health environment.
Security and service meet in the same moment
Security and usability are often discussed as separate workstreams. The user encounters them together.
Identity verification protects the person and the record, but the process must still be understandable. Access controls limit who may enter the system, but roles must be assigned correctly. Encryption protects communications, but the joining workflow must function across the devices and connections the program intends to support.
When a secure step creates confusion, responsive service protects more than convenience. It can prevent unsafe workarounds, identify incorrect permissions, surface configuration issues and help users follow the approved process with confidence.
Support also gives RingMD a direct view of how the service performs in daily use. Repeated questions can sharpen guidance, recurring access problems can reveal configuration patterns and clusters of device issues can guide focused testing. Each response solves an immediate need while helping product, security and operations teams improve the service.
We therefore treat customer service as part of security governance, because it shows us how controls behave where policy meets daily work.
Leadership must make service systemic
The award recognized extraordinary team performance; our responsibility is to make that level of service repeatable every day.
Service needs ownership, escalation paths, documentation, staffing, operational measures and a clear connection to engineering, security and program leadership. People should know when an issue can be handled through established guidance, when specialized review is required and who remains accountable across team boundaries.
As our Chief Operating Officer, Varun Arora aligns implementation, product, security and support across federal delivery. In close coordination with IHS professionals, he keeps teams anchored to shared commitments, moves unresolved issues to accountable owners and makes customer needs part of the way we operate the service.
Across RingMD, the disciplines IHS valued—understanding, creativity, follow-through and performance—shape how we plan, escalate and improve federal delivery.
The result is a shorter path from a user’s question to a working, secure resolution.
Public duty appears in quiet reliability
At the 2023 ceremony, IHS described the honorees’ efforts as the essence of public service and thanked them for their dedication to the agency mission.
We work alongside the clinicians, public servants and Tribal health professionals responsible for care. Our duty is to perform the role IHS entrusted to us with competence, candor and respect for the people the system exists to serve.
Much of that work is quiet.
It appears when instructions make sense the first time. When a difficult problem reaches the right specialist without the customer retelling it. When a low-bandwidth user has a practical path. When a security requirement is explained clearly enough to follow. When the team checks that the solution worked. When the pattern behind one issue improves the experience for others.
The award reminds us that public-health technology succeeds through software, formal milestones and the daily reliability of the organization behind the platform.
For RingMD, the IHS Director’s Award honoring the broader telehealth team carries a clear message: service is a disciplined system of understanding, technical judgment, ownership and follow-through that turns secure capability into dependable care infrastructure.