New reporting from Nextgov/FCW reveals that the Trump administration’s repeated claims about improving VA appointment wait times don’t hold up to scrutiny, as new internal data shows that for many veterans, access to care is actually getting worse.
The data comes on the heels of news that the Trump administration ignored warnings that ending the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program would result in thousands of veterans losing their homes. Last year, 10,000 veterans were foreclosed on because of the Trump administration’s actions.
The decline in the quality of care and services that veterans are receiving from VA hospitals across the country goes back to the earliest days of the administration, when Trump fired thousands of staff from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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- Many VA facilities are struggling to provide veterans with timely access to care in areas like neurology, post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and oncology, according to data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Some facilities and some specialties have fared better, allowing veterans to access appointments more quickly, but the data does not show consistent, comprehensive progress toward faster care for new patients.
- That data included information from 134 of VA’s 170 medical centers across 10 key specialties with significant data, which collectively make up the bulk of appointments out of dozens of specialties—primary care, mental health treatment individually and in a group setting, substance abuse treatment, PTSD, neurology, physical therapy, pulmonary, oncology and urology.
- For three specialties—physical therapy, substance use disorder and oncology—the number of facilities meeting the VA’s standard actually declined from the previous year.
- For neurology, just 7% of facilities met the goal to get veterans an appointment within 28 days. Wait times for neurology appointments in the VA’s medical center in Omaha saw the biggest increase, from an average of 27 days to 127 days. In Dallas, wait times jumped from 87 days to 130.
- Half of the locations offering oncology appointments also saw worsening wait times.
- For VHA locations offering treatment for substance use, PTSD and neurology, about 48% of facilities saw deterioration in wait times.
- As of February, VHA had lost a net 18,626 employees since Trump took office, when accounting for hiring, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. VA has seen a net loss of around 1,100 physicians and nearly 3,000 nurses, as well as 800 medical support assistants who handle appointment scheduling.
- Across each specialty at all 134 facilities, VA saw 486 specialties experience worsening average wait times of at least two days.
- In total, about 42% of specialties on a per facility basis saw patients waiting longer for an appointment.
- Among those with wait time changes of more than two days in either direction, eight specialties saw more facilities with increased wait times rather than decreases.
- Dr. Steven Braverman, who led multiple VA medical centers and regional offices before becoming the VHA chief operating officer from late 2024 through September 2025, said that “it is clear from these data that there is a mixed picture of improvement and worsening despite VHA’s efforts toward improvement across the board.”
- He noted that larger facilities are facing more difficulties in meeting primary and mental health care standards and are more vulnerable to increases in demand for basic services. Smaller facilities, meanwhile, struggled to keep pace with specialty wait time standards and are particularly vulnerable to the departure of staff in those fields.
- That said, “very few facilities currently failing to meet wait time standards demonstrated improvement over the past year,” Braverman said. “That suggests a demand versus capacity mismatch that won’t be fixed by efficiency or productivity improvements. That requires increase in hiring or clinical infrastructure to meet growing demand.”
Published: Apr 17, 2026