Trump will Nominate Acting VA Secretary Wilkie for Permanent Position

Just a day after the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Cerner inked their $10 billion EHR (electronic health record) deal, President Trump said he would be nominating Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie for the permanent position.

For nearly two months, Wilkie has been the acting VA secretary following Trump’s dismissal of former Secretary David Shulkin, M.D.

Wilkie, who is also the Department of Defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness, is Trump’s second nominee for the VA position. The president also nominated Ronny Jackson, M.D., White House physician and rear admiral in the Navy, to serve as VA Secretary, while naming Wilkie the agency’s acting secretary. However, Jackson withdrew due to allegations around his professional conduct.

Today, during a White House summit on prison reform, Trump remarked, “Acting Secretary Wilkie, who, by the way, has done an incredible job at the VA, and I’ll be informing him in a little while—he doesn’t know this yet—that we’re going to be putting his name up for nomination to be Secretary of the Veterans Administration. Fantastic.”

Yesterday, Wilkie announced that VA signed has signed the contract with Cerner “that will modernize the VA’s healthcare IT system and help provide seamless care to Veterans as they transition from military service to Veteran status, and when they choose to use community care.”