Here is a promise that is easy to want to believe. The Department of Veterans Affairs has spent this year telling veterans that the wait for care is finally getting shorter. The Secretary, Doug Collins, put it to a House committee plainly: "We've actually seen over the past year our wait times stabilize or go down." [3] It is the kind of line you hope is true. I pulled the appointment data and read it clinic by clinic. The promise holds in one narrow place and breaks across a lot of others.
Give them their best case first, because part of it is real. The VA can point to its own figures showing shorter waits for new patients booking primary care and mental health appointments, and it published them. [1] That is a genuine improvement, and a veteran trying to get in the door for the first time should know it. Hold onto that number, because it is the strongest thing the broad claim has going for it.
Here is what the broad version leaves out. Government Executive used public-records law to obtain appointment wait times for 134 of the VA's 170 medical centers across ten specialties, then lined this year up against last. [3] More combinations of clinic and specialty got slower than got faster: roughly 42 percent grew longer, about 37 percent improved. [3] In the specialties veterans lean on hardest, neurology, PTSD care, and substance-use treatment, close to half of all facilities went the wrong way. For cancer care it was half. [3]
THE RECEIPTS
- 134 of 170 VA medical centers, 10 specialties, this year against last [3]
- About 42% of clinic-and-specialty lines got LONGER; about 37% got shorter [3]
- Neurology, PTSD, and substance-use care: nearly half of facilities slower [3]
- Cancer care: half of facilities slower [3]
A share like 42 percent can feel abstract, so look at one clinic. At the Omaha VA medical center, the average wait for a neurology appointment went from 27 days to 127. [3] In Dallas, neurology went from 87 days to 130. [3] These are not figures the agency says do not exist. They come straight out of its own scheduling records.
Data
| Omaha, before | 27 |
|---|---|
| Omaha, now | 127 |
| Dallas, before | 87 |
| Dallas, now | 130 |
Here is the part that connects the chart to a decision. Early last year the VA drew up a plan to shrink its workforce back to its 2019 size, a cut of more than 80,000 jobs, and floated doing it through mass layoffs. [2] After bipartisan pushback, it scrapped the large-scale layoff. "A department-wide RIF is off the table," the agency said. [2] What it did instead was shrink by attrition: 484,000 employees on January 1, 2025, down to 467,000 by that June, on the way to roughly 30,000 gone by the end of the fiscal year. [2] A House committee's Democratic staff later put the total loss closer to 40,000, and found that the overwhelming majority of those who left worked in health care. [5]
WHO GAINED
- The "we cut the bureaucracy" headline needs the lines to stay short
- One real, narrow new-patient number does that work in a press release
- The veteran waiting 127 days for a neurologist is not in the headline
The VA disputes the read, and its objection belongs right here. A department spokesman called the analysis incomplete, saying it leaves out parts of the system and does not weigh how many appointments each site handles. [3] That is a fair caution about leaning on any single dataset. It does not move the core problem: the agency is quoting the metric that improved while the wider file, built from its own scheduling records and echoed by independent reporting, shows more specialties and more clinics getting slower. [3][4]
Here is the after-action report, plain. The claim that waits broadly stabilized or fell is true in the corner of the system the VA chose to measure and feature, and untrue across the specialties where veterans wait on a neurologist, an oncologist, a counselor. [1][3] A statement that rides one real improvement to imply a system-wide win is not a lie. It is misleading, which is its own kind of harm when the people taking it on faith are veterans deciding whether to keep waiting or give up. The clinic-by-clinic numbers are public. A veteran does not have to trust me or the Secretary. The file is open. [3]
THE BOTTOM LINE
- New-patient primary and mental health waits did improve - that part is true [1]
- Across 134 centers and 10 specialties, more lines got longer than shorter [3]
- Omaha neurology went from 27 days to 127. The claim that waits are broadly down: Misleading [3]
