The top healthcare official at the Department of Veterans Affairs is stepping down after less than a year on the job.
Undersecretary for Health John Bartrum told staff in an email last night that he will resign from his position, effective July 6. In this role, he oversaw VA’s nationwide health care system, which serves more than 9 million veterans.
Bartrum joined the VA in the early days of the second Trump administration, and was confirmed as the undersecretary for health by the Senate in December 2025. In his email to staff, he wrote, “I am proud of what we have accomplished together.”
“The most vital resource we have within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is its people. It has been my honor to lead these professional civil servants,” Bartrum wrote.
VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said the department will make an announcement in the coming days regarding interim VHA leadership.
“We thank John for his leadership of VHA and the many VA accomplishments he presided over during his 17 months of service at the department,” Slaven said.
As undersecretary for health, Bartrum played a leading role in the VA’s resumed rollout of its new Electronic Health Record. The VA started deploying the new system to medical centers in April, after a three-year hiatus to address persistent outages and usability issues. More rollouts are expected later this year.
The EHR modernization project is expected to make health records interoperable between VA and the Defense Department. DoD completed its rollout of the new EHR in March 2024. VA expects to complete its rollout of the new EHR as soon as 2031.
This EHR modernization project, which began under the first Trump administration, is one of the biggest IT contracts in the federal government.
Lawmakers from both parties previously considered pulling the plug on the multibillion-dollar project. But Bartrum wrote that VA is “putting it back on a credible path after years of uncertainty.”
Bartrum also led VA’s healthcare operations during its biggest reorganization in 3o years. In a recent interview with Federal News Network, Bartrum said the “current structure that we have is riddled with redundancies that slow decision-making, sow confusion and create competing priorities.”
“We set out goals of improving healthcare for veterans, empowering local hospital directors and eliminating duplicate layers of bureaucracy and ensuring consistency across the system,” Bartrum said. “That’s how we’re getting after ‘better’ to make sure that we’re taking care of our veterans.”
VA is spending $4.8 billion this year to restructure and modernize its roughly 170 hospitals and 1,300 sites of care.
VA Secretary Doug Collins has told lawmakers that the reorganization will focus in part on shifting VA’s workforce to the regions of the country with a growing veteran population, and drawing down staffing in places where the veteran population is shrinking.
The VA eliminated 30,000 positions through attrition last year and saw its first net decrease in staffing in recent years. VA’s inspector general office reported last year that severe healthcare staffing shortages are on the rise. The VA, as part of ongoing reorganization plans, also removed about 26,000 unfilled positions from its rolls.
Collins told lawmakers in April that the VA is “actively recruiting hundreds of people at every one of our hospitals, and will continue to do so,” but with limited growth in its total headcount.
Bartrum wrote that “the framework for this reorganization will better serve veterans for decades to come.” In addition, he told staff that the VA has made “meaningful improvements” in patient wait times across the system.
The VA is also preparing to issue what’s likely to become one of the largest service contracts in government history, as it recompetes its contract for community care — the department’s term for private-sector health care that veterans receive, but the VA pays for.
The massive contract vehicle represents only the second time VA has signed large contracts with health plans to coordinate private-sector care for veterans. The first was shortly after the MISSION Act was signed in 2018.
Those contracts are now expiring, and in their place, VA is preparing one large indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract, with a total potential value of $700 billion over the next 10 years.
The VA has faced bipartisan skepticism from Congress over these efforts, because lawmakers say the department has been slow to detail its plans for the new contract, called Community Care Network Next Generation.
Bartrum wrote in his email to staff that this new community care contract is “positioning VHA to deliver more responsive, more accountable care in partnership with the private sector.”
He also wrote that VHA is making “meaningful improvements” reducing patient wait times.
“These were not small undertakings, and I am confident in the foundation we have built. Each of these initiatives is now on a strong and sustainable trajectory, carried forward by the talented team I have had the honor of leading,” Bartrum wrote.
Before his current post, Bartrum served in the early days of the second Trump administration as a member of its landing team and later became a senior advisor for Collins.
Bartrum, a retired major general in the Air Force, served more than 40 years in civilian and military roles — including positions at the Department of the Air Force, the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Management and Budget and the House Appropriations Committee.
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