Physician tapped by Trump to be next VA Secretary

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to run the Veterans Affairs Department—and the largest integrated healthcare system in the U.S.—is the department’s current top health official, David Shulkin, MD.

Shulkin would be the first VA Secretary who isn’t a veteran. His healthcare resume, however, is quite long. After earning his MD at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, he served in executive roles such as chief medical officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, president and CEO of Beth Israel Medical Center and founded hospital error tracking software company DoctorQuality.

“President-elect Trump's commitment to caring for our veterans is unquestionable, and he is eager to support the best practices for care and provide our Veterans Affairs' teams with the resources they need to improve health outcomes," he said in a statement released by the Trump transition team.

Trump had considered other healthcare executives, such as Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD.

Shulkin was appointed in 2015 by President Barack Obama to be the VA’s undersecretary of health, essentially the department’s top physician, and reportedly continued to practice internal medicine and see patients at VA hospitals after taking on the role. His qualifications—and the fact he’s the only Trump Cabinet pick to have served under the current president—drew praise from Democrats who will weigh in on his nomination.

"After calling the Department of Veterans Affairs 'the most corrupt agency in the United States' on the campaign trail, the president-elect's decision to retain a current VA leader and Obama-appointee is a notable departure from his inflammatory rhetoric," said U.S. Rep. Mark Takano, D-California, the ranking member on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, told Military.com. "I sincerely hope he will leave his promise to move the VA toward privatization on the campaign trail as well."

How Shulkin feels about privatizing veterans’ healthcare is unclear, though advocacy groups largely welcomed a continuation of what he has accomplished so far in the department.

“Under Shulkin, VA has slowly and quietly shifted more of its patient load to the private sector, and that has helped VA handle much greater demand,” Phil Carter, director of the Military, Veterans and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security, said to the Military Times. “That trend will likely continue, and work better than outright privatization of the VA.”