Louise R. Van Diepen, MS, was appointed Chief of Staff for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in the Department of Veterans Affairs in March 2007. As Chief of Staff, she reports directly to the Under Secretary for Health.
With an annual budget of nearly $34 billion, VHA is the nation’s largest integrated health care system, employing more than 192,000 health care professionals and operating more than 1,400 sites of care including hospitals, community and facility-based outpatient clinics, nursing homes, residential rehabilitation transition programs, readjustment counseling centers, and various other facilities. In addition to its medical care mission, VA’s health care system is the nation’s largest provider of graduate medical education and a major contributor to medical and scientific research.
Ms. Van Diepen’s previous VA experience includes serving as VHA’s Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Clinical and Operations Support. In that role, she supervised 14 Senior Executive Service (SES) Chief Officers and their national programs.
Ms. Van Diepen has been employed with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for more than 25 years and has held progressively more responsible positions at VA Central Office, a VA Medical Center and two private corporations. The breadth of her experience spans the range from clinical to supervisory to managerial to executive leadership. She began her national program leadership at the VA Central Office in 1988 as the head of clinical pharmacy/quality management programs for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). In 1994, she left government service to pursue private sector opportunities in information technology development as the Clinical Director of software development and later was recruited to executive leadership (Vice President) with a national pharmacy corporation. She returned to government service in 1999 and resumed various clinical management and leadership roles in the Office of the Medical Inspector and the Office of Quality and Performance. She served as the Clinical Executive to the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health (PDUSH) from 2003.
Ms. Van Diepen has both a Bachelors and Masters degree in Pharmacy from the University of New Mexico. She was formerly an adjunct faculty at the College of Pharmacy of the University of New Mexico and pharmacy residency director. She is a licensed pharmacist in three states (Virginia, California, and New Mexico). She is also nationally certified in Geriatric Pharmacy and a Fellow in the American Society of Health Systems Pharmacists.
She is a graduate of Leadership VA, VHA’s Health Care Leadership Institute, and the Federal Executive Institute’s Leadership in a Democratic Society program. She is a recipient of the Arthur Fleming Award for her leadership in the development of national pharmaceutical pricing policy.
May 2008
