Szilvia Kovacs MS, RD, LDN
Acting Assistant Director
VA Bay Pines health care
Ms. Szilvia Kovacs, MS, RD, LDN, currently serves as the Acting Assistant Director for Bay Pines VA, effective March 9.
In this role, Ms. Kovacs oversees health care operations and strategic initiatives at all eight of our community-based outpatient clinics. This leadership ensures the continued delivery of high-quality care to Veterans across southwest Florida.
Ms. Kovacs brings extensive leadership experience in health care administration and clinical operations within the VA. Prior to her latest appointment, she served as the Chief of Nutrition and Food Service at the James A. Haley VA in Tampa, Florida.
Ms. Kovacs also served in the role of Acting Assistant Director at the James A. Haley VA. In this capacity, she helped lead initiatives to improve Veteran experience, expand health disparity screenings, implement a grant-funded Food Prescription program addressing food insecurity among Veterans, and support improvements that contributed to the facility’s CMS star rating increasing from four to five stars. She also served as a member of the executive emergency readiness and incident command team during several major operational events.
From 2022 to 2025, Ms. Kovacs served as the VISN 8 Specialty Care Integrated Clinical Community (ICC) Community of Practice Lead, acting as a regional liaison across seven VA facilities to coordinate strategic planning, improve clinical documentation practices, advance health equity initiatives, and strengthen emergency preparedness collaboration across the VA Sunshine Health Care Network.
Prior to joining VA, Ms. Kovacs held several private sector facility-based and regional health care leadership positions, to include an appointment as the Director of Food and Nutrition at Blake Medical Center and Clinical Market Director for HCA HealthTrust’s West Florida Division.
Ms. Kovacs holds a Master of Science in Nutrition from CUNY–Queens College and a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition from Murray State University. She is a graduate of the Veterans Health Administration’s Health Care Leadership Development Program (HCLDP) and has completed additional executive leadership training through VA’s ILEAD program.