On August 12, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) published a review on the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) staffing shortages for the 2025 fiscal year. The OIG surveyed VHA-identified facilities to identify severe staffing shortages at each location. Notably, all 139 VHA medical campuses reported staffing shortages, the number of shortages increasing by 50 percent this fiscal year.
Some key findings of the report included:
- In the fiscal year of 2025, VHA facilities reported a total of 4,434 severe occupational staffing shortages, marking a 50 percent increase from 2024, when facilities reported 2,959 shortages.
- Ninety-four percent of facilities experienced severe staffing shortages for Medical Officer positions, and 79 percent reported severe shortages for Nurse roles.
- Psychology was the most reported severe clinical staffing shortage and also the most frequently reported Hybrid Title 38 shortage, with 57 percent of facilities indicating it as a shortage.
- Police was reported as a shortage by 58 percent of facilities, making it the most frequently reported severe nonclinical staffing shortage and the most common of all occupations.
“[T]he survey of the medical centers, which was completed in April, did not fully capture the extent to which the Trump administration has reduced VA’s (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) workforce. Many of the workers who took the latest buyout offer left after the survey was completed,” Meryl Kornfield with The Washington Post wrote. Furthermore, Kornfield reported, “VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins has argued the department, the second largest in government, is bloated and inefficient and needs further staffing cuts. He initially pushed to slash the workforce by 15 percent, though he later backtracked on those plans. At the same time, he has acknowledged the department needs more medical staff members and blamed a nationwide shortage of health care workers.”
“The latest VA data shows about 7,500 employees in veteran-facing jobs have left the department so far this fiscal year. That includes a net loss of 1,720 registered nurses, nearly 1,150 medical support assistants, more than 600 physicians, nearly 200 police officers, nearly 80 psychologists, and nearly 1,100 veteran claim examiners,” Jory Heckman reported for the Federal News Network. Additionally, Heckman wrote, the VA is also hiring fewer employees. “More broadly, the VA is on track to shed nearly 30,000 employees through attrition by the end of the fiscal year. The department says these positions are mostly administrative roles, and it does not intend to fill them once employees leave.”
In a statement obtained by The Guardian, Congressman Mark Takano of California, the ranking Democrat on the House committee on veterans’ affairs, said the report “confirms our fears” that shortages of medical staff were leading to “decreased access and choice for veterans”.
Pete Kasperowicz, press secretary for the VA, emailed a response to to CBS News stating that the review is "not based on actual VA healthcare facility vacancies and therefore is not a reliable indicator of staffing shortages."
The review was the 12th OIG report in a series on staffing shortages and the 8th to identify severe occupational staffing shortages at the facility level. The VA OIG stated that the report does not fully reflect the impact of employees leaving under the deferred resignation program and the department’s plans to reduce staffing through attrition.
The report was released a day after The Guardian’s Aaron Glantz reported that “the number of medical staff on hand to treat veterans has fallen every month since Donald Trump took office.”
