Veterans Surgical Services

Caring for those who’ve served their country is one of our greatest privileges as surgeons.

Clinical Specialties

The Division of Veterans Administration (VA) at Michigan Medicine leads the nation in metrics of clinical quality, drawing patients from around the region to the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. Our VA Division provides tailored care for patients, translates research discoveries to improve care for all veterans, and trains new surgeons in a unique environment where they can develop their skills as clinicians and researchers.

We treat more than 3,000 patients a year across four surgical services at the VA Ann Arbor Health System, focusing on multidisciplinary care to provide well-rounded support for patients, including nutrition counseling and mental health treatment. Our mission is to provide the same caliber of care you’d receive in a large academic hospital in the smaller and more personal setting of the VA, where patients build relationships with physicians and staff.

Our clinical specialities include:

  • Bariatric surgery for weight loss.
  • Colorectal surgery to treat inflammatory bowel disease and other conditions.
  • Surgical oncology for treatment of liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, gastric cancer, colon cancer, and rectal cancer.
  • General surgery, for routine surgical treatment of gallbladder conditions, hernia, and hemorrhoids.

Education

We support the education of surgical residents and medical students by providing them exposure to a unique clinical setting and patient population at the VA. We offer teaching conferences each week to discuss upcoming patient cases and the pathophysiology of surgical diseases. This type of educational dialogue is a deeply ingrained part of our culture as surgeons and as teachers.

Research

VA surgeons balance their clinical service with robust research programs, spanning basic science to health outcomes. Our current research interests include:

  • Collecting and studying tissue samples to inform understanding of obesity-related diabetes.
  • Developing better end-of-life care for oncology patients.
  • Treatment of post-surgical complications, using multidisciplinary leadership to develop new approaches.