The Department of Veterans Affairs is officially lifting a hiring freeze on its health care workforce, after shedding tens of thousands of positions last year.

But the VA, which saw the first-ever workforce net decrease, is unlikely to hire its way to a higher headcount than what it currently has.

A report from Democrats on the Senate VA Committee released Thursday finds VA facilities are still operating “within strict staffing caps.”

“Facility leadership in the field are still reporting denials and severe delays in hiring approvals for all positions from clinical staff to custodians to claims processors,” lawmakers wrote.

The report claims the VA lost more than 40,000 employees last year, and that 88% of them worked in health care. About 10,000 of those employees worked in frontline positions that the department has struggled to fill.

VA workforce data shows the department saw a net decrease of 3,000 registered nurses last year, a net decrease of 1,000 physicians and a net decrease of 1,550 appointment schedulers.

In a typical year, the VA’s workforce sees a net gain of about 10,000 employees. But under the Trump administration, the VA sought to eliminate 30,000 positions through attrition by the end of fiscal 2025. The department previously envisioned cutting 83,000 jobs in part through layoffs.

VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz disputed several of the report’s findings. He said the VA achieved its headcount reduction goal of 30,000 employees, but didn’t lose 40,000 employees, as Senate Democrats claim. The VA also disputes the report’s claims that veterans, in some cases, are seeing longer wait times for VA mental health care appointments. 

Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters in a call that the report shows a “diminished” VA that is unable to keep up with the needs of veterans.

“The loss of talent is so deeply regrettable, and the results are basically longer wait times,” Blumenthal said.

Kasperowicz said in a statement that, “while Blumenthal stages political theater, VA is making major improvements for veterans under President Trump.”

The VA fired about 2,400 probationary employees last year, but largely reduced its workforce through voluntary separation incentives.

VA workforce data shows the department made about 21,000 hires last year, offsetting the total impact of these workforce cuts.  The latest data from the Office of Personnel Management shows the VA saw a net reduction of more than 27,000 positions in 2025.

But Blumenthal said these new hires have done little to improve the VA’s capacity.

“They are not the same skilled people as have been either fired or lost because of the toxic environment that’s been created in many areas of the VA,” he said.

 

VA workforce data shows the department made about 21,000 hires last year, offsetting the total impact of these workforce cuts.  The latest data from the Office of Personnel Management shows the VA saw a net reduction of more than 27,000 positions in 2025 (Source: OPM)In a memo last week, VA Under Secretary for Health John Bartrum told department leaders that “all hiring freeze restrictions” still in place at the Veterans Health Administration have been lifted.

Bartrum wrote in the memo that each Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) “has been allocated a baseline number of positions calculated on their budgeted FTE plus anticipated needs for growth,” and that requests to exceed that headcount must be approved by the VA Strategic Hiring Committee.

“Leaders and managers must manage operational needs within their cumulative full-time equivalent (FTE) budget and position thresholds,” Bartrum wrote.

The report claims veterans are seeing longer wait times for mental health care appointments. In early January, new-patient wait times for individual mental health care appointments in 14 states exceeded 40 days — twice the wait time threshold that allows veterans to seek treatment outside the VA’s health care network. Those states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Maine, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia. According to the report, the national mean for new patients to sign up for individual mental health care appointments is 35 days.

However, Kasperowicz said VA data shows wait times for mental health care were under six days for established patients, and 19 days for new patients. 

The VA eased requirements for veterans to seek care from non-VA “community care” last year, and has increased spending on community care. The department is embarking on a $1 trillion next-generation community care contract, one of the largest government contracts in U.S. history.

House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said in a hearing Thursday that the contract, “if done properly,” would give the VA “unprecedented flexibility” to award contract and task orders that would lead to better health care outcomes for veterans.

In their report, Senate VA Committee Democrats found the VA last year cancelled about 2,000 contracts and let another 14,000 expire without plans to renew or replace those services.

VA Secretary Doug Collins has repeatedly defended his plans for a smaller workforce. He told lawmakers last May that increased staffing hasn’t always led to better outcomes for veterans.

Last year, the department decreased its backlog of benefits claims by nearly 60% despite a net decrease of about 2,000 VA claims processors.

Kayla Williams, a former VA assistant secretary and a senior advisor for the Vet Voice Foundation, said the department reduced the initial claims backlog, but has grown the volume of claims requiring higher-level review.

“These actions were never about efficiency or cost savings,” Williams said.

The VA anticipated a spike in the backlog after Congress passed the PACT Act, making more veterans eligible for VA health care and benefits, because they were exposed to toxic substances during their military service.

Lindsay Church, the executive director of Minority Veterans of America, said 1.2 million veterans have lost their VA providers under the Trump administration.

“Clinics can’t keep care teams staffed. Appointments are being canceled or delayed, and veterans who rely on consistent, trauma-informed care are being forced into instability and pressured into community care. Mental health access, which has always been a crisis for our community for decades, has deteriorated rapidly,” Church said.

Mary Jean Burke, the first executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees National VA Council, said that by the end of 2026, most VA facilities are on track to lose about 2-5% of their psychologists — and that locations, including Seattle and Buffalo, are on track to see “double-digit” attrition.

Burke said VA health care employees have left because the VA has slashed jobs, stripped away remote work and telework, and brought staff back into “overcrowded” spaces.

“These punishing policies haven’t just lowered morale, they end up compromising the quality of care we provide,” Burke said.

Collins is scheduled to testify before the Senate VA Committee next Wednesday, in a hearing about the department’s ongoing reorganization efforts.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is embarking on major changes next year. It’s looking to get the rocky rollout of a new Electronic Health Record back on track. VA medical facilities already using the system have been beset with problems for years.

Meanwhile, the VA is planning to roll out the biggest reorganization of its health care operations in decades. Here’s a look ahead at VA’s plans for 2026.

VA EHR next steps

VA is planning for its new EHR from Oracle-Cerner to go live at 13 sites in 2026 — starting with four sites in Michigan in April 2026.

Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director of VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, told the technology modernization subcommittee of the House VA Committee that, based on lessons learned from previous go-lives, multiple sites will go live “simultaneously in each deployment wave.”

“This approach allows us to scale up the number of deployments, enhance efficiencies and improve the sharing of best practices within and between markets,” Evans said in a Dec. 15 hearing.

Carol Harris, the director of IT and cybersecurity issues at the Government Accountability Office, told lawmakers it would be “very risky” for VA to plan for simultaneous EHR go-lives.

“It’s going to take a tremendous amount of resources that I’m not quite sure is sustainable for multiple sites at once,” Harris said.

Status of EHR rollout so far

VA’s new EHR is currently running at six sites. Full deployment would bring the EHR to 170 sites. According to Evans, the department currently expects to complete the deployment as soon as 2031.

The VA has been in a “reset” period since April 2023, and paused new go lives until the department addresses persistent outages and usability issues reported by VA medical staff at sites already using the new EHR.

A GAO report in March found that only 13% of VA staff using the new Oracle-Cerner EHR believed that the modernized system made VA as efficient as possible, and 58% of users believed the new system increased patient safety risks.

Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), chairman of the technology modernization subcommittee, said the project’s lifecycle cost has grown to about $37 billion.

“This timeline is locked in, and the countdown is on. But the question remains: When the switch is flipped in April, will the system deliver, and will it do what we need it to do? Are we going to run into snags like we have in the past? For millions of veterans relying on VA hospitals and staff supporting them, this is not something that is theoretical. It’s real. It’s happening and we have to do it right,” Barrett said.

Subcommittee ranking member Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) said what she has heard from VA and Oracle this year “has not convinced me that VA is ready for launch at 13 facilities in 2026.”

“I have raised many questions with VA and Oracle. But the answers do not give me confidence. In fact, I worry that we are spending billions of dollars while simultaneously setting this program, particularly the six sites that are already live, up for failure,” Budzinski said.

Reaction from the Senate

Senate Democrats are also wary about VA’s EHR rollout plans. In a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins, Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said they have “serious concerns” that EHR problems flagged by GAO and the VA inspector general’s office have not been fully addressed

“While we should always strive to innovate and improve the quality of care for veterans, in practice, the rollout of EHRM has been so problematic that it created life-threatening problems and ongoing upheaval for veterans’ ability to get the health care they need,” they wrote.

New VHA leader & VA reorganization plans

Last week, the Senate confirmed John Bartrum, a former senior advisor to Collins, will serve as VA’s under secretary for health.

Bartrum, a combat veteran with more than 40 years of active-duty and reserve military service, previously oversaw policy and funding at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The VA earlier this week announced its intent to reorganize the Veterans Health Administration.

Collins said in a statement that VHA’s current leadership structure “is riddled with redundancies that slow decision making, sow confusion and create competing priorities.”

VA says the changes aren’t expected to result in a significant change in overall staffing levels. But the Washington Post first reported that the VA no longer plans to fill tens of thousands of vacant health care positions.

The VA says it’s briefed lawmakers on the reorganization, and that implementation will take place over the next 18-24 months.

Rather than pursue a reduction in force of more than 80,000 employees, as it had considered earlier this year, the VA shed more than 30,000 positions through attrition in fiscal 2025.

“The department’s history shows that adding more employees to the system doesn’t automatically equal better results,” Collins told lawmakers in May.

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