Dr. Ashfaq Ahsanuddin was appointed Acting Chief of Staff for the Western North Carolina VA Health Care System effective June 2021. He has served as the Deputy Chief of Staff from August of 2019 to present, in which he is responsible for the direct supervision of 18 clinical services and for maintaining a relationship with our community partner level one tertiary care medical center. His previous roles included Chief of Medicine Service at Charles George VAMC from January 2017 to December of 2019; Chief of the Hospital Medicine Section from January 2011 until March 2021; and has been a staff Hospitalist physician since November 2009. He has served as the Co-Chair of the Utilization Management and Flow committees for several years. In early 2020, he was centrally involved in COVID surge planning for the Medical Center. He continues to provide care both to hospitalized patients due to illness and supervises the provision of medical care to surgical patients receiving elective joint replacement since the inception of the Co-management program in 2015. Dr. Ahsanuddin received his A.B. degree in Psychology from Davidson College in 1989. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine including an extra year of Chief Residency at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., and is both a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.