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WASHINGTON, DC — While VA has officially lifted the hiring freeze that’s been in place for the last year, staff shortages don’t seem to be easing, according to a new report.
A report from Democrats on the VA Senate Committee found that facilities are still operating under strict staffing caps, with many continuing to experience hiring denials and delays in onboarding new staff. According to VA leaders, those delays have been significantly reduced in the last year, but much of that improvement might be due to a change in how the department reports its hiring numbers.
When he took office in 2024, President Donald Trump instituted a federal hiring freeze and directed agencies to offer employees limited-time buyout offers as part of a Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), as well as fire most probationary employees. VA would go on to exempt most frontline clinical staff from both the freeze and the DRP, and some of the probationary employees were rehired. However, this hasn’t prevented VA from shedding thousands of employees in the last year, many from clinical roles.
“[VA Secretary Doug Collins] celebrated that VA was already on pace to lose as many as 30,000 employees in FY 2025. He claimed it was through ‘natural attrition,’ voluntary early retirement, and [DRP]. But data proves there is nothing natural about these losses,” the report spearheaded by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) states. “In a typical year, VA’s workforce gains a net of at least 10,000 employees. [In 2025,] the workforce has experienced a net loss three times that number. VA is hemorrhaging employees at dramatic and unsustainable rates, and the exodus has only just begun.”
According to the report’s authors, data from the VA’s Workforce Dashboard shows that, in FY24, the department hired 2,793 RNs, 1,068 physicians and 955 social workers. In FY25, VA lost 3,002 RNs, 1,068 physicians and 716 social workers.
VA leaders have promised Congress and veterans that these cuts will not impact veteran care or benefits. The report argues otherwise, noting that wait times for mental healthcare appointments have increased, with a national average of 35 days and 15 states showing wait times higher than 40 days. The threshold for a patient to become eligible for community care is 20 days.
The report cites an exchange between Blumenthal and VA Acting Assistant Inspector General Julie Kroviak, MD, during a hearing in December, with Kroviak stating that, while mental health provider shortages are being felt in systems across the country, VA in particular has lost in-demand staff because of decreased morale.
“We are getting more feedback that morale is going down because of the uncertainty within the federal government,” Kroviak said. “While they aren’t participating in the DRP … or other programs clinical staff were exempt from, they are still losing staff because of morale.”
VA lifted the hiring freeze in January, but strict hiring caps remain in place. In a memo sent to all VISN directors on Jan. 13, Undersecretary for Health John Bartrum wrote, “Each VISN has been allocated a baseline number of positions calculated on their budgeted [full-time employee positions,] plus anticipated needs for growth. … Leaders and managers must manage operational needs within their cumulative full-time equivalent budget and position thresholds.”
According to the Democrats, facility leaders are still reporting denials and severe delays in hiring approval for all positions.
At a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing last month, Collins blamed federal salary caps for vacancies in the more high-demand specialties.
“When you have starting salaries of $600,000 for anesthesiologists in the community, and I can’t pay that … I don’t blame them for going somewhere else,” Collins told lawmakers. “That’s not a workplace issue. That the fault of this body and us to not fix it.”
At the same hearing, Collins touted reductions in onboarding time for new employees.
“We’ve seen our wait times in the last year stabilize or go down” he declared.
He was challenged on that claim by Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), who pointed out that VA has recently changed the way they report onboarding times.
VA is congressionally mandated to release monthly hiring statistics, which it does through its VA Workforce Dashboard. In April 2025, VA reported 106 days between a potential employee submitting their application and when they begin work. Starting in May, the department began using time to tentative offer in its calculations, immediately dropping the reported delay to 47 days.
“I almost applauded you for reducing the time to hire for VHA employee from 109 days in 2024 to 47 days as of [January],” Ramirez told Collins. “Then I took a closer look, and I realized it was smoke and mirrors.”
