Christian Helfrich
Christian Helfrich is a researcher who studies how to speed the adoption and effective use of innovation in healthcare and public health.
By Jeanne Moore
He worked as a Core Investigator at the VA Puget Sound Health Systems Research & Development program for 20 years before he was fired in February 2025 due to the DOGE cuts. While attending a rally to protest cuts made to the VA, Christian was interviewed by West Seattle Indivisible.
You said cuts to the VA were heartbreaking because the VA Hospital in Seattle is one of the finest facilities around. My impression of VA hospitals had not been so great. Have I been wrong all this time?
Yeah, many folks have that same misconception. I think it goes back to the movie, “Born on the 4th of July.” The prevailing opinion was the VA was a catastrophically horrible healthcare system, where vets were sent to die. Unfortunately, the movie was a fairly accurate description at the time. The good news is because of that movie and the power of storytelling, the VA recognized that Veterans were not being well served, and in the mid-nineties, the VA started to make some major changes.
They shifted to a primary care-based system and opened a whole bunch of outpatient clinics. They created new Vet centers that are run by veterans. They provided information about the benefits vets were entitled to, helped them access information about jobs and housing, and most importantly, it gave them a place to go where they felt safe and understood. One vet, Robert, told me that what used to be a thriving community to support vets has felt like a ghost town the past few times he has visited because so many staff have been fired.
The recent cuts to the VA seem akin to if you lived in a dilapidated shack, but you recently remodeled it to a beautiful house, and now the government has torn it down.
Yeah. That’s exactly right. And people are saying, “What are you so upset about? It was such a shack, right?” We’ve got to tell them the updated, accurate story about the VA.
What would you say to people who support vets and voted for Trump. What do you think they should know?
The VA is a remarkably high-performing organization. That’s not to say there aren’t inefficiencies or problems. There is no system that big which doesn’t have some problems. We’ve got some beautiful hospitals and facilities in some places. In other places, they might not have the highest tech, but the quality of care is unrivaled. The people in my field evaluate how the VA does on performance, and quality metrics like patient satisfaction, rehospitalization rates, and mortality rates, and the VA consistently equals or outperforms the private sector.
One of the reasons for that is because we never stop improving. It’s part of our DNA, and it’s into the culture. The clinicians are constantly looking at new ways of doing things, new ways of organizing care. People think we’re all bureaucrats sitting around waiting to clock out at 5 PM. The reality is you have these incredibly dedicated people whose assumption is even if things are working great, they are driven to do things even better. And I think that’s kind of magical. I think it’s awesome.
What can people do now to support Vets and their care?
Call your Congressional Representative and Senators and tell them to fight DOGE’s efforts to dismantle the Federal Government, especially the VA. DOGE is illegally directing Federal agencies, including the VA, to make cuts and it is harming veterans.