VA names city’s 6th director in 5 years

For the sixth time in the last five years since a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak led to the firing of a former director, the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System has named a new director.

Donald E. Koenig Jr., a former lieutenant commander in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps and a longtime private hospital executive, will become director of Pittsburgh’s VA Healthcare System and its 3,700 employees who serve more than 80,000 veterans, the regional VA office said Friday.

“Mr. Koenig has experience with complex health care situations and I am confident that he will provide a fresh and dynamic perspective for our VA health care facilities in the Pittsburgh area,” Timothy Liezert, acting director of the regional VA office, said in a news release.

Reached by phone at his home near Youngstown, Ohio, Mr. Koenig said he was “very excited and honored” to accept the position, but he did not want to answer questions about his new job until after he starts on May 26.

Mr. Koenig, 60, who has a law degree from George Washington University, worked with Navy JAG for 14 years before he began his 20-year career with Mercy Health in Ohio.

At Mercy Health, he spent 11 years working in Cincinnati as the health system’s chief compliance officer and general counsel. He spent the last nine years at Mercy as executive vice president and regional chief operating officer, as well as president of St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, a teaching hospital and Level One trauma center.

He resigned from Mercy in April 2018 because, according to what Don Kline, Mercy’s regional chief executive officer, told the Youngstown Business Journal: “As Don approaches one of life’s milestones, this reflection has led Don and his wife Sherrie to look at their next chapter in life.”

Mr. Koenig will replace Barbara Forsha, who is in her second stint as interim director of the Pittsburgh VA.

She will return to her full-time role as deputy director after Mr. Koenig begins his job.

Ms. Forsha replaced Karin McGraw, who was named permanent director in 2016 but said when she was hired she would stay only a couple of years before she retired.

Ms. McGraw retired from the VA in January after three years in the post.

Ms. McGraw replaced interim director Timothy Burke in 2015, who was replacing Ms. Forsha during her first stint as interim director, which was several months long.

That time, Ms. Forsha replaced David Macpherson, who was named interim director in 2014 to replace Terry Gerigk Wolf, who had been the Pittsburgh VA’s director for seven years before the Legionnaires’ outbreak that came to light in 2012 led to her dismissal by the VA.

The outbreak, which began in 2011 before it was detected in fall 2012, sickened 22 veterans and led to the deaths of six of them.