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The VA is America's largest health network. It serves millions of veterans. The Trump administration has cut about 30,000 VA jobs. The VA says after those cuts, timely care for veterans has actually improved. NPR's Quil Lawrence reports on some new data.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Cutting thousands of doctors and nurses and other positions that VA has struggled to fill for years, it seems like that would make wait times for care longer.
KAYLA WILLIAMS: I think we all understand this intuitively.
LAWRENCE: Kayla Williams is an Iraq vet, a VA patient and, to be transparent, a former VA undersecretary in the Biden administration. In a study for the progressive Vet Voice Foundation, she examined daily wait time data from 21 VA medical centers from last August to February, as the cuts played out.
WILLIAMS: There are so many ways to slice and dice the data, and it can be so complicated to look at every single weed. But trying to pull back and look at the forest, wait times increased at 71% of the medical centers and in 64% of the specialties when averaging.
LAWRENCE: Williams found longer wait times in several key specialties, but not across the board. She found, for example, that mental health wait times for individuals stayed roughly the same, though group therapy and PTSD-specific appointments were taking longer. Assistant VA Secretary Pete Kasperowicz took issue with the study, saying it comes from a left-wing organization and dealt only with new patients, which make up just 11% of appointments. He said the sample of 21 medical centers is too small - only 12% of VA facilities. And he said for established patients, average wait times are lower today than they were under the Biden administration for primary specialty and mental health care. But the VA hasn't made the data behind those numbers public, even though Democrats on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee have asked repeatedly, like earlier this year when Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal had this exchange with VA Secretary Doug Collins.
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RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Well, then you can see that the wait times have increased...
DOUG COLLINS: And - well, actually...
BLUMENTHAL: ...Sometimes to 50, 60 or 70 days.
COLLINS: Actually, that's not true. And as of January 21, the national average for mental health care for new patients is 18.8 days. The national average for established patients is 5.8 days. That is the actual numbers.
BLUMENTHAL: Well, that is contrary to the information we've been provided, and I'd like facility-by-facility data on the wait time for mental health care.
LAWRENCE: There are a mountain of vectors that go into figuring out the real report card - changing veterans' demographics, increased referrals out to private care. Other veterans groups have started projects to download the daily numbers nationwide and figure this out. Alex Rich is a combat vet and data director for another progressive vets group, Common Defense.
ALEX RICH: We would encourage Secretary Collins to release all of the data that he's basing those conclusions on. I think we can have a real conversation about that and identify the spots where veterans and providers need help. And I think that would be an incredibly productive thing.
LAWRENCE: Most experts agree it will take many more months - or years - to get a real understanding of the consequences of the VA staff cuts.
Quil Lawrence, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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