The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plans to delete over 10,000 full-time positions, many of them from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). The culling of these positions will occur during fiscal year 2025.
The VA plans were disclosed in the President’s Annual 2025 Budget, which was revealed on March 11, 2024. This reduction of personnel denotes a significant reversal from the long-term VA trend.
For example, since 2019, the VA has added over 82,000 new employees to its’ workforce. In Fiscal Year 2023, the VHA has added over 61,000 employees and grew its workforce by seven (7%) percent.
The VA made a significant attempt to recruit for what the VA described as the “Big Seven” occupations — physicians, nurses, housekeeping aides, medical support assistants, nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, and food service workers.
The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) added many positions to support claims processing, especially for the implementation of the PACT Act, and other services for disabled veterans.
“I think what you’re seeing is the result of the extremely successful hiring push that we made last year in response to the additional authorities provided under the PACT Act,” said Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the VHA, Laura Duke.
The VA currently has 458,000 employees in its workforce, the largest number of employees in the VA’s history.
According to the proposed 2025 Budget, the VA anticipates cutting the 10,000 positions by “natural attrition” and not filling existing vacancies when they occur. According to the VA’s Undersecretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the “targeted attrition” will focus on supervisory and administrative roles.
The VA anticipates trimming over 100 positions from the Department’s General Administration Offices, as part of an effort to reduce management spending by roughly four (4%) percent next fiscal year.
“Most of those General Administration positions, according to the Assistant Secretary for Management Jon Rychalski, are already vacant and the move is designed to underscore leadership efforts to keep costs and spending under control.
Chief Financial Officer Laura Duke indicated that most of the 10,000 position cuts will come from medical care sites where retirements and departures were lower than expected last year.
“So, we now need a trimming back down,” said CFO Duke, “so we can continue to hire in certain priority care areas, such as mental health.”
The hiring would continue for physicians, nurses, medical support assistants, mental health professionals, other vital staff, and other in-demand positions. According to the VA, this would allow the VHA to meet all its operational objectives for the disabled veterans the agency serves.
The VA loses about nine (9%) percent of its workforce on an annual basis, or 38,000 employees. According to Dr. Elnahal, this would mean the VHA would fill about three out of every four positions in 2025. He stressed that the rate would not be spread evenly across the VHA.
“This will not be an equal picture, medical center to medical center,” said VA Undersecretary Elnahal. “It would all depend on veteran care demand and veterans need. So as a trend, we should see medical centers over areas where veterans are not growing, or even declining in population, potentially attriting more than others.”
The 2022 enacted legislation, PACT Act, has expanded health care and disability benefits to an estimated six (6) million disabled veterans. Congress must now take action to approve the VA’s fiscal 2025 budget by October 1, 2025.
My Opinion: I was under the impression that most of the new employees hired by the VA in 2023 would be from the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). This is the VA’s workforce that determines eligibility, processes the disability claims, and handles the claim appeals.
With the influx of veterans now covered by the PACT Act and needed to be processed, it was common sense that the VBA would need additional resources to handle the flow.
Now, that the initial surge of PACT Act veterans has ebbed, it would appear that a majority of the positions deleted would be from the VBA, instead of the VHA.
My main concern is something Dr. Elnahal stated that cuts “would all depend on veteran care demands” and at medical centers “where veterans aren’t growing, or even declining in population” would see greater cuts from their VHA staff.
I fear that rural VA Medical Centers, like the Chillicothe VAMC may have more outsourcing (also known as [AKA] “privatization”) of their medical services, which would lead to closing the facility in the future.
Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs) must be aware of the future implications of the ‘slashing” of these positions in the context of the VA’s 2025 Budget.
BioSketch: John Plahovinsak is a retired 32-year Army veteran who served from 1967 to 1999. He is the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Department of Ohio’s Hospital Chairman and Adjutant of DAV Chapter #63 (Clermont County). He can be reached at: plahovinsak@msn.com.