Story highlights Obama accepts VA secretary's resignation, says Shinseki doesn't want to be a distraction 
 
 Shinseki says his commitment to veterans drove his decision to resign 
 
 The move comes after months of reports about problems with the VA medical system 
 
 Eric Shinseki resigned Friday as the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, leaving behind the daunting task of repairing a broken health care system that has left thousands of veterans at risk as they wait for medical care. 
 
 Shinseki's resignation concluded a firestorm of criticism and growing calls for him to step down following revelations of sometimes deadly delays for veterans waiting for care at VA hospitals, allegations exposed by CNN in a series of exclusive reports. 
 
 Details of the delays were first exposed by CNN last November in an investigation into two VA hospitals in the Southeast. Since then, CNN's reporting has expanded to include numerous other VA hospitals, culminating with details about secret waiting lists at the Phoenix VA that may have played a role in the deaths of 40 veterans. 
 
 President Barack Obama went before reporters at the White House minutes after meeting with Shinseki, saying the retired Army general told him "the VA needs new leadership" to address widespread issues that were chronicled in new reports this week. Obama said Shinseki "does not want to be a distraction." 
 
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 "That was Ric's judgment on behalf of his fellow veterans, and I agree. We don't have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem," Obama said. 
 
 Calls for Shinseki's resignation snowballed in recent days from across the political spectrum -- Republicans and Democrats, as well as veterans' advocacy groups -- because of the misconduct . 
 
 In a farewell message to VA employees, Shinseki didn't address the scandal specifically but did say he resigned with veterans' interests in mind. 
 
 "My personal and professional commitment and my loyalty to veterans, their families and our survivors was the driving force behind that decision," he said. "That loyalty has never wavered, and it will never wane." 
 
 Shinseki says 'situation can be fixed,' but not by him 
 
 Earlier Friday, Shinseki announced steps to address the VA shortcomings, including removing senior leaders in the Phoenix VA medical system , eliminating performance awards for VA leaders in 2014 and wait times as a metric for evaluations and accelerating care to veterans. 
 
 He also apologized to veterans and Congress, but declared: "This situation can be fixed." 
 
 But Shinseki won't be part of the solution. 
 
 He went to the White House to present Obama with findings from his internal audit of what was happening in the VA system, including that many audited facilities had "questionable scheduling practices" that signaled a "systemic lack of integrity." 
 
 The President acknowledged that scheduling issues didn't rise to the attention of Shinseki, whom he praised as a man who "has served his country with honor for nearly 50 years." 
 
 At the same time, Obama said that he and Shinseki agreed that a shift in leadership was necessary. 
 
 For now, Sloan Gibson -- a Shinseki deputy -- will head the VA until a new secretary is named and confirmed. 
 
 "Part of that is going to be technology. Part of that is management," the President said. "But as Ric Shinseki himself indicated, there is a need for a change in culture within the VHA, and perhaps the VHA as a whole -- or the VA as a whole that makes sure that bad news gets surfaced quickly so that things can be fixed." 
 
 Breaking open the scandal 
 
 Problems in the VA system date back decades, but CNN's reporting of long waits at VA hospitals brought the issue into national focus at the end of 2013. 
 
 An April report by CNN in which sources said 40 veterans died at a Phoenix VA facility that used secret waiting lists to cover up the problem prompted angry calls for action. 
 
 The VA has acknowledged 23 deaths nationwide due to delayed care. 
 
 CNN also obtained an e-mail written by an employee at a Wyoming VA clinic that said staff was instructed to "game the system" to make the clinic appear more efficient. 
 
 A preliminary inspector general's report made public Wednesday described a "systemic" practice of manipulating appointments and wait lists at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Phoenix. 
 
 According to the report, at least 1,700 military veterans waiting to see a doctor were never scheduled for an appointment or were placed on a waiting list at the Phoenix VA, raising the question of just how many more may have been "forgotten or lost" in the system. 
 
 In a recent USA Today opinion piece, Shinseki ordered VA officials to contact each of these veterans "in order to bring the care they need and deserve." 
 
 The latest report by the VA inspector general's office and Shinseki's auditors indicated a link between employee bonuses and covering up patient wait times. 
 
 There also have been calls for a criminal investigation into fraudulent record-keeping to cover up delays at VA hospitals. Obama said Friday that would be up to the Justice Department, which has been collecting information but has not launched any investigation. 
 
 Shortly before he resigned, Shinseki told a veterans group that he was shocked by the inspector general's report, especially the prevalence of wait lists for veterans needing medical care. 
 
 "That breach of integrity is irresponsible, it is indefensible and unacceptable to me," he told the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans just before heading over to his final meeting with Obama. 
 
 "I said when this situation began weeks to months ago and I thought the problem was limited and isolated because I believed that. I no longer believe that. It is systemic," he said. 
 
 At the same time, the VA chief of more than five years said that others had misled him. 
 
 "I was too trusting of some, and I accepted as accurate reports that I now know to have been misleading with regard to patient wait times," he said. "I can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. This is something I rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform and so I will not defend it because it's indefensible, but I can take responsibility for it and I do." 
 
 Whistleblower: VA was 'way too focused on ... good numbers' 
 
 As the accusations mounted -- including the latest one in which Reps. Mike Doyle and Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania claimed 700 veterans had been placed on a primary care waiting list for doctor appointments at the Pittsburgh VA center, with some waiting since 2012 -- so too did the pressure on Shinseki. 
 
 Politicians largely applauded Shinseki's resignation on Friday, even as they said that the VA needed to do more than put new people in his place to resolve its shortcomings. 
 
 "The denial of care to our veterans is a national disgrace, and it's fitting that the person who oversees the Department of Veterans Affairs has accepted responsibility for this growing scandal and resigned," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement. 
 
 Meanwhile, a VA whistleblower who told CNN about the problems at the Phoenix facility said Friday he was saddened by Shinseki's resignation under such circumstances. 
 
 "The VA administrators got way too focused on having good numbers and they forgot the most important mandate, the reason we all work at the VA -- to take care of veterans, to save their lives and give them good medical care," Dr. Sam Foote said. 
 
 "The next secretary's biggest challenge will be to get that refocused and make sure the number one job is taking care of veterans - not worrying about their bureaucratic careers," Foote added. ||||| WASHINGTON — Eric Shinseki resigned as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs on Friday, leaving behind a sprawling bureaucracy embroiled in scandal and burdened with a decades-old legacy of overwhelmed facilities and management failures that his successor must now confront. 
 
 President Obama announced Mr. Shinseki’s departure after a 45-minute Oval Office meeting between the two men that ended a week of mounting demands from both parties for the secretary to step down. Mr. Obama, who appeared pained at the turn of events, hailed Mr. Shinseki as having an unquestioned commitment to the nation’s veterans, but he said the political storm had made Mr. Shinseki’s continuing leadership untenable. 
 
 “We don’t have time for distractions,” Mr. Obama said. “We need to fix the problem.” 
 
 Fixing the problem at the department now becomes an urgent political matter for the president, once again raising questions about whether the candidate who pledged in 2008 and 2012 to make government work efficiently has lost grasp of the government he now leads. 
 
 The department’s troubles, however, remain a far more serious concern for the millions of veterans whose access to timely health care has been steadily eroding as waves of wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan have converged with those who returned from earlier wars. 
 
 Most of the veterans now seeking treatment at department facilities are aging Vietnam-era service members, many with chronic illnesses like diabetes that require long-term care or with cancer and cardiovascular disease that require complicated and expensive treatment. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are further straining the system with mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder. 
 
 Veterans’ demand for medical services is soaring. The number of outpatient visits to V.A. health care facilities has grown by 26 percent over the last five years, to 94.6 million in the current fiscal year, according to the department. Over the same period, the number of staff doctors and nurses has grown by 18 percent. 
 
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 The effort to resolve the fundamental problems at the department will also play out in Congress, where Republicans say the problem is not a lack of money — the department’s $154 billion annual budget has more than doubled since 2006 — but rather inefficiencies in the delivery of care. Democrats say that the problem is a serious shortage of doctors and not enough hospitals. 
 
 “This is going to be a slow grind,” a senior administration official said of the need to overhaul the department. “A lot of the problems, they are not just systemic, but they are chronic. It’s like, roll up your sleeves, start digging into the culture and get rid of people who are impeding necessary change.” 
 
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 “It won’t be pretty,” said the official, who asked for anonymity to be blunt about the challenge facing Mr. Obama in the months ahead. 
 
 One immediate question is whether the departure of Mr. Shinseki will have any real impact on the agency’s deep-seated problems. Mr. Shinseki apologized in a speech on Friday morning, before Mr. Obama accepted his resignation, saying that he was “too trusting” of some people working for him. He criticized a “systemic, totally unacceptable lack of integrity” at some veterans health care centers that he said he could not explain. 
 
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 Defenders of Mr. Shinseki point out that problems at the Veterans Affairs Department, the country’s largest health care system, were far worse during the Vietnam era. Despite the current problems, many veterans say that the quality of care delivered — once they are able to get into the system — is much better today. 
 
 In addition, the veterans agency has a history of innovation in its health care programs, including advances in the treatment of spinal cord injuries, improvements in artificial limbs, increased use of electronic health records and the investigation of medical errors. 
 
 But the problems described Friday in an internal audit are remarkably similar to those documented six years ago in a report to the department by Booz Allen Hamilton, the management consulting company. The Booz Allen report found “chronic delays in care” at veterans hospitals and clinics, resulting in part from “the current shortage of nurses, nurse practitioners, primary care providers and specialty physicians.” 
 
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 Mr. Shinseki had already been challenged by some of those problems during his five years at the department’s helm. A year ago, he and Mr. Obama had what aides described as a “come to Jesus” meeting in which the president demanded that Mr. Shinseki deal with a huge backlog of disability claims that were delaying benefits to veterans. 
 
 But the recent allegations that officials manipulated waiting lists for thousands of veterans across the country exposed even bigger issues. The department’s internal audit, which Mr. Shinseki presented to the president on Friday, attributed the scheduling scandal to the agency’s “overarching environment and culture which allowed this state of practice to take root.” 
 
 The audit said that the department’s culture “must be confronted head-on if it is to evolve to be more capable of adjusting systems, leadership and resources to meet the needs of veterans and families.” 
 
 The audit was unsparing in its documentation of the extent of problems. It found, for example, that at least one instance of reporting false patient wait-time data had occurred in nearly two-thirds of the department’s facilities. “Such practices are sufficiently pervasive to require V.A. to re-examine its entire performance management system,” the audit said. 
 
 The seeds of Mr. Shinseki’s departure may have been planted years ago, when he established standards that his supporters said were admirable but unrealistically high. He set 125 days as the goal for processing disability claims and was then blamed for the backlog that ensued. For new patients, he required that veterans be seen within two weeks. 
 
 In the audit, that 14-day standard was singled out as an “organizational leadership failure” and a major problem in providing timely care, second only to a shortage of doctors. 
 
 In announcing Mr. Shinseki’s departure, Mr. Obama said a number of department officials, including in Phoenix, the medical center that spawned the current scandal, would be fired. He also said that bonuses would not be paid to senior V.A. health care executives. 
 
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 Now, the challenge for Mr. Obama will be finding someone who has the ability not just to lead a department with nearly 300,000 employees, but also steer it in a new direction. Mr. Obama said Friday that Sloan Gibson, Mr. Shinseki’s deputy and the president’s choice to be the acting secretary, will not lead the department over the long run. 
 
 “There is a need for a change in culture within the V.H.A.,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the Veterans Health Administration, “and perhaps the V.A. as a whole that makes sure that bad news gets surfaced quickly so that things can be fixed.” 
 
 Among the names mentioned as Mr. Shinseki’s possible successors by lawmakers and officials at veterans organizations are Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, who was under secretary of Veterans Affairs from 1994 to 1999; Representative Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, a veteran who served as assistant secretary at the department; Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana; and Jim Webb, a veteran who was a Democratic senator from Virginia and a secretary of the Navy. 
 
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 The president may also face a difficult time getting Congress to agree on legislation and financing to make the necessary changes. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have demonstrated vastly different visions for reforming the department. 
 
 Speaker John A. Boehner said Friday that “until the president outlines a vision and an effective plan for addressing the broad dysfunction at the V.A., today’s announcement really changes nothing.” 
 
 Republicans like Representative Jeff Miller of Florida, who is chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, blamed how the department’s resources were divvied up for much of its problems. “The middle-management administrative functions have grown exponentially over the last few years,” Mr. Miller said. 
 
 Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said that although more accountability was needed, lack of resources was a major problem. 
 
 “I suspect very strongly there are parts of the country that we simply do not have the number of doctors and nurses we need, and those will cost money,” he said. 
 
 Part of the department’s problems stems from sheer size: Not only is it the nation’s largest health care system — with nine million enrolled veterans served at 150 medical centers and 800 outpatient clinics — it is among the largest workers’ compensation systems, charged with disbursing annual disability payments to nearly four million veterans. 
 
 In addition, many of the more recent patients are seeking treatment for profound injuries that would not have been survivable in earlier wars but are today, in part because of mandatory body armor and improvements in front-line medical care.
– Eric Shinseki is out as leader of the VA. President Obama today said he accepted the Cabinet secretary's resignation "with regret" in the wake of the scandal over shoddy medical care for the nation's veterans, reports CNN. Obama said Shinseki told him he didn't want to be a distraction as the department begins its reforms. Earlier today, Shinseki himself apologized for the VA's "systemic" problems and announced that he was firing the top officials at the hospital in Phoenix, perhaps the worst offender. "He has worked hard to investigate and identify the problem," Obama said of Shinseki, who faced a drumbeat of calls for his resignation from lawmakers in both parties. The president called the four-star general a "good man," but said Shinseki "felt like new leadership would serve our veterans best, and I agree with him." The New York Times observes that Shinseki seemed intent on staying on, "but his contrition and promises of action came too late to save his job."