The Department of Veterans Affairs has eliminated thousands of medical roles once described as essential to veteran care.

An analysis of internal records found the agency chose not to fill roughly 14,400 vacant health care positions, including more than 1,500 physicians and 4,900 nurses, according to The New York Times. Those vacancies equal about five percent of the VA’s medical workforce.

The department provides care to roughly nine million veterans nationwide, as The Independent reports.

The reductions come after a wave of retirements and resignations last year. Instead of backfilling many of those jobs, the agency removed them from its staffing plans.

The VA eliminated roughly 14,400 unfilled medical positions.

Doctors And Nurses Already In Short Supply

The cuts land on a system that was already strained.

A 2025 inspector general report found more than 90 percent of VA facilities faced “severe shortages” of physicians, and nearly 80 percent reported severe nurse shortages, according to The New York Times.

Geddes Scott, a recently retired VA nurse in New York City, told The Independent that his facility was understaffed, with exhausted nurses often working double shifts, raising the risk of errors.

Psychiatrist Dr. Katie Phelps, who left the VA last year, called the loss of staff “very worrisome,” telling The Independent there had been “quite a lot of unintended collateral damage.”

More than 1,500 physician roles were cut from staffing plans.

Layoffs And Attrition Reshape The Workforce

Earlier this year, the VA dismissed more than 1,000 newly hired employees, including nurses and doctors, as part of a federal cost-cutting effort, according to Nurse.org. Many were probationary workers with less than a year of service.

VA Secretary Doug Collins said the move would save about $98 million and insisted, “These moves will not negatively impact VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries[.](https://nurse.org/news/va-fires-nurses-doctors-trump-federal-cuts/).”

At the same time, the department has reduced its overall headcount through attrition. A previously proposed plan to cut 83,000 jobs was scrapped, but the agency still shrank from roughly 484,000 employees to about 451,000, according to The Independent.

Nearly 4,900 nursing positions were removed.

Veteran Care Programs Feel The Strain

Thousands of staff members have left the health care side of the VA in the past year, with many clinical and leadership roles remaining unfilled.

Dr. Melissa London, a VA psychologist in California, told The American Prospect that burnout had become overwhelming. “The burnout was so real, and the environment was so demoralizing,” she said.

Recent VA data show more than 11,000 nurse vacancies and hundreds of openings for psychologists and social workers, The American Prospect reports.

Veterans continue to rely on the system for routine appointments, crisis intervention, mental health treatment, and long-term care.

Whether fewer clinicians can meet that demand remains an open question inside a department that once pledged to expand the front lines of care.

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