Richard L. Griffith, MHA, FACHE was appointed Associate Director of the VA Illiana Health Care System on October 9, 2023.
In this role he leads healthcare operations and support activities for more than 150,000 Veterans in Central Illinois and Western Indiana in an acute and long-term care system involving 1,500 employees and an annual budget of more than $366 million.
Mr. Griffith was commissioned into the US Air Force in 1997 and had assignments at Minot, Bolling, and Keesler Air Force Bases, as well as Fort Sam Houston. He deployed to Baghdad International Airport to perform casualty receiving and aeromedical staging operations and helped lead disaster relief activities following Hurricane Katrina.
After joining the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006, Mr. Griffith was the administrator of a Health Service Research and Development center and was then executive officer to a medical center director. From 2015 until 2023, Mr. Griffith was the Chief Strategy Officer for Veteran Health Indiana, a tertiary care system with two inpatient and 10 outpatient facilities serving 65,000 Veterans annually in affiliation with the Indiana University School of Medicine. His portfolio included strategic planning, public-private partnerships, academic affiliate development, public relations, outreach, and Congressional and state government liaison. He created a $2 billion capital development plan, guided construction and activation of ten new sites of care, and developed the Indianapolis VAMC replacement medical center proposal.
Mr. Griffith earned a Master of Healthcare Administration degree at Baylor University and completed a fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Health System. He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, is faculty at Indiana University’s Fairbanks School of Public Health, and received a Certificate in Strategic Planning from Cambridge University. He has served in a variety of community leadership roles including US Air Force Auxiliary National Board member, Combined Federal Campaign coordinating committee member, and association board member for the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis.