Former Associate Deputy Under Secretary for Health (ADUSH) – Office of Quality & Patient Safety
Veterans Health Administration
Gerard R. Cox, MD, MHA retired from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs last December following 45 years of combined military and Federal executive service. He was a member of the national leadership team of the Veterans Health Administration from 2014 through 2024 and held a series of senior executive roles including Assistant Under Secretary and Deputy Under Secretary for Health. As the creator and leader of VHA's Office of Quality and Patient Safety from 2020-2024, Dr. Cox oversaw 18 national programs focused on assessing and improving health care quality and patient safety; providing analytics and tools to assess how VHA performs as an organization; and building and supporting capability to assess risks and achieve and sustain high performance at 170 VA Medical Centers and more than 1,300 outpatient clinics. For the last 6 years he also led VHA’s ambitious strategy to reduce harm, attain unprecedented levels of patient safety, create a just culture, and achieve high reliability across the nation’s largest integrated health system.
During his previous military career of more than 30 years as a U.S. Navy medical officer, Dr. Cox served in a series of hospital leadership roles with increasingly complex responsibilities including service chief, service line leader, chief operating officer, and chief executive officer. He held executive positions on the staffs of the Navy Surgeon General, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Commander of U.S. Navy forces in the Middle East, and the Naval Inspector General. He also served as a White House physician for Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush.
Following his undergraduate and medical education, Dr. Cox completed a medical internship at the National Naval Medical Center and the combined residency program in emergency medicine at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the American College of Preventive Medicine.
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High Reliability at Headquarters: Cultural Transformation in the Virtual Environment (74H)
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
2:00pm – 3:00pm CT