VA’s reported staffing challenges in healthcare facilities hit 7-year high 

The Veterans Affairs Department is having a harder time finding candidates to meet its staffing needs across its nationwide network of healthcare facilities, VA officials are telling the agency’s watchdog office. 

VA’s inspector general office, in a report last Friday, found that VA healthcare officials reported a total of 4,712 severe occupational staffing shortages in fiscal 2026 – the highest number reported over the past seven years. Officials at all 139 VA facilities reported staffing shortages. 

The report’s findings highlight the types of positions that VA healthcare facilities have difficulty filling when they need to hire, and “does not necessarily indicate the presence of vacancies.”

“A facility may designate an occupation as experiencing a severe shortage whether it has zero vacancies — or 100 vacancies,” the VA OIG wrote. 

A VA spokesman said the report’s findings are more indicative of the competitiveness of the healthcare job market, and that the VA overall has lower vacancy rates for nurses and physicians than private-sector healthcare providers. 

VA healthcare officials reported severe staffing shortages across 389 positions. The report finds a year-over-year uptick in the number of VA facilities reporting staffing challenges for physicians and nurses.

Ninety-seven percent of VA facilities reported severe shortages in physician positions (up from 94% in FY 2025), and 85% reported severe staffing shortages for nurse positions (up from 79% in FY 2025). 

Practical nurses overtook psychologists as the number-one clinical shortage occupation, with VA healthcare officials reporting it as a shortage at 59% of facilities. Psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and nursing assistants also fall on the “top five” list of clinical staffing shortages across VA healthcare facilities. 

VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said in a statement that this report "is not based on actual VA healthcare facility vacancies and therefore is not a reliable indicator of staffing shortages.” 

Slaven said the VA-wide vacancy rates for doctors and nurses are 15% and 9%, respectively, and “lower than most other healthcare systems.” 

VA healthcare officials also reported widespread staffing challenges for police, custodial workers, medical support assistants, food service workers and healthcare engineers. 

The report’s findings are based on questionnaires sent to Veterans Health Administration officials asking their opinions of severe staffing shortages by occupation. VHA officials reported shortages to OIG between March 18 and April 1. 

VA OIG states that it does not validate the accuracy of the information VHA officials provided in their questionnaire responses. 

“The results reflect the selections of these VHA officials based on the perception of staffing shortages at the facility level, not an independent assessment by the OIG,” the report states. 

The VA reduced its workforce by 30,000 employees last year and placed staffing caps on each facility, resulting in the elimination of tens of thousands of vacant positions. VA Secretary Doug Collins told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee in April that the VA can hire any employee it wants at any time. 

“We will hire every need that we have in the department,” Collins told lawmakers. “Our hospitals have the complete autonomy to hire where they need and what they need going forward.”

VA OIG identifies the most common staffing shortages each year in a congressionally mandated report “so that the VA Secretary may consider special hiring authorities for those occupations.” 

Slaven said the VA’s ability to recruit and retain health care personnel is “hindered by statutory pay caps for physicians,” who in many instances can make several hundred thousand dollars more per year in the private sector than they can at VA. 

“VA looks forward to working with Congress to address this longstanding pay disparity, which directly harms the recruitment of health care professionals,” he said. 

VA doctors are currently capped at earning $400,000 per year. But the Sen. Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act, signed by President Joe Biden shortly before leaving office, allows the VA to issue 300 waivers to that pay cap, in order to recruit or retain staff in-demand specialists. 

The VA has received bipartisan criticism from lawmakers for not yet using these pay waivers. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the top Democrats on the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees, led colleagues in a letter in March calling the delay in implementation "unacceptable" and requesting more information on VA’s implementation of the Dole Act. 

Sen. Jon Husted, R-Utah, and Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, wrote a similar letter last November, urging Collins to issue regulations that would enable VA to institute the higher pay caps. 

Blumenthal said in a statement that the VA OIG report “confirms that staffing shortages at VA continue to increase in number and impact.”  

“Since the last severe staffing shortage report, tens of thousands of positions at VA’s health care system have been eliminated — artificially reducing vacancy rates and preventing facilities from hiring staff they need,” Blumenthal said.