Ongoing recruitment challenges for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health care workforce are gaining more attention — and concerns — from Congress.
The Veterans Health Administration is on track to reach its year-end target increase for its total number of employees. But problems persist in VHA’s hiring and onboarding processes, lawmakers on the House Veterans Affairs Committee said.
“We all know that this is a crisis situation. It was a crisis before COVID. It’s a bigger crisis now. And we have to treat it accordingly and work on this in a way that we can really expedite,” Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.) said during a VA committee hearing Wednesday. “[VA has] hired more people than they have historically … but we just have to even do better than that.”
