VA doesn't know how many calls its answering or how long veterans are waiting to get through

The Veterans Affairs Department is failing to track how many calls from its patients it is answering and what is happening with those calls, according to a flash report from the agency’s watchdog, which said the failures are putting vulnerable veterans at risk. 

In 13 of the 15 medical facilities the inspector general reviewed, key data including caller hang up rates, answer rates and average wait times were not being tracked. At those facilities, around 1 million of the 2.1 million calls received in the one-year period ending July 31, 2025, were not tracked. 

The situation was particularly acute for “high-risk” patients seeking radiology or mental health services, the auditors found. Around 45% of the untracked calls were to clinics in those two fields, which the IG said put “veterans who may need timely and critical care at risk.” 

VA in 2023 issued a directive requiring that all phone service lines collect and analyze data, and set the goal of answering at least 80% of calls within 30 seconds and allowing less than 5% of calls to be abandoned. 

The IG said it spoke to veterans who faced delays, causing uncertainty and frustration. In one example, a veteran’s spouse said she made multiple calls to her local VA to schedule a radiology appointment but those calls went to voicemail with no response within the promised 24-hour window. Her husband’s cancer may have spread, the auditors found, making the appointment critical. In other cases, the watchdog observed veterans who resorted to driving to medical facilities to make appointments because they could not get through on the phones. 

“As a result of the issues identified, veterans may face delays and scheduling challenges in receiving care,” the IG said. “Further, absent data may prevent leaders from identifying problems or taking corrective action to ensure timely, seamless care.”

A VA Office of Information and Technology official confirmed to the watchdog that the department “lacks a system to capture call performance data for specialty clinics that use individual or shared phone lines.” Of the 13 facilities that lacked key data, however, seven had no plans to address the IG’s findings. 

The IG said it is “committed to issuing timely reports” that help VA deliver high-quality care to veterans, which spurred the watchdog to put forward an “advisory memorandum” as it completes its full audit. That more comprehensive report is still forthcoming. 

“The OIG is disseminating these findings to ensure all VHA medical facilities are aware of and can proactively start collecting and overseeing specialty care call data,” the watchdog said. 

VA has boasted that wait times for mental health appointments were under six days for established patients and 19 days for new patients in fiscal 2025. Congressional Democrats and some VA employees have disputed those numbers. The department has lost 1,500 schedulers among the roughly 30,000 total employees it has lost since last January.