New Veterans Affairs Chief: A Hands-On, Risk-Taking Standout
WASHINGTON — A gray-haired Vietnam veteran sat rustling on the paper of an examining table at the small veterans clinic in Grants Pass, Ore., on a recent afternoon when his doctor for the day appeared on a screen in front of him, wearing a white lab coat and bulbous headphones.
“Take some deep breaths. All the way in … And, sir, do you want to give me a good cough?” the doctor said as he listened to the veteran’s heart and lungs from about 2,400 miles away in his office overlooking the White House.
The doctor was David Shulkin, the new secretary of veterans affairs, and this was not some publicity stunt. Dr. Shulkin believes it is impossible to right the stumbling bureaucracy used by nine million veterans without understanding the experience of patients in the examining room. So Dr. Shulkin, the leader of the country’s second-largest federal agency, has been seeing patients regularly, both in person and remotely, since he was named the Department of Veterans Affairs’ under secretary of health in mid-2015 to help turn it around after the scandal over a cover-up of appointment delays.
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