VA Wait Times

A Vet Voice Foundation Report

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides high-quality, specialized care that 9 million Veterans depend on, yet a shift toward staff cuts and privatization is jeopardizing this vital system. Our latest report reveals that wait times have climbed at 71% of studied hospitals, with critical gaps growing in mental health and specialized care for post-9/11 and women Veterans. Explore the data behind these trends and learn why reversing course is essential to returning VA to the gold standard of care our heroes deserve.

The VA Works

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) runs the largest integrated health care system in the United States, providing care to roughly 9 million enrolled veterans.

Study after study has shown that VA provides higher quality, more culturally competent, and more evidence-based care — tailoring that care to veterans who already carry a heavy health burden and whose experiences are foreign to most community-based providers.

For medically vulnerable veterans with blast injuries, toxic exposures, a history of military sexual trauma, or spinal cord injuries, specialized private sector care is vastly inferior or simply doesn’t exist.

VA isn’t a broken system. It’s a system that was working — until it started getting dismantled.

Then They Started Cutting

Veterans_Administration_Building_-_Washington,_D.C

In 2025, VA announced plans to reduce staff by nearly 30,000 positions.

Although VA leadership claimed that clinical positions were exempt from layoffs, the turmoil contributed to increased challenges in filling empty positions. Layoffs of human resources personnel made it harder to hire clinicians. Eliminating non-clinical jobs didn’t eliminate the work — it forced clinicians to take on more roles.

The agency eliminated thousands of medical positions that were left vacant after a wave of resignations and retirements, leading to a reduction in the number of providers working at VA for the first time in two decades.

VA lost roughly 500 psychologists and psychiatrists over a single year. More than 90 percent of VA facilities now report severe shortages of doctors.

To find out what this meant for the veterans trying to get care, the Vet Voice Foundation tracked wait times at 21 VA Medical Centers across the country for six months — from August 2025 through February 2026.

~30,000

Staff positions targeted for reduction

~500

Psychologists and psychiatrists lost in one year

90%+

Of VA facilities reporting severe doctor shortages

VA Medical Centers tracked for this study

6 months

Of daily wait time data collected

Here’s What Happened

Since the staffing cuts began, the Vet Voice Foundation found that when averaged across all specialties, wait times increased at 15 of the 21 VA Medical Centers studied — 71 percent.

Wait times increased in 16 of 25 specialties — 64 percent — when averaged across all sites.

These 21 facilities span 13 of VA’s 18 regional networks and all four Census regions of the United States. This isn’t one bad hospital. This is a system under stress from coast to coast.

With unpredictable wait times and wait time changes, there is no consistent story about veteran experience in accessing VA care nationwide. Veterans do not have the ability to assess or predict how long it will take them to access care. And in many specialties at most locations, VA is violating its own standards for timely access.

The Primary Care Trend

Since 2017, wait times for VA primary care have consistently grown longer — a deeply concerning trend for veterans’ access to care.

In 2017, the average wait for a new VA primary care appointment was 20 days — exactly meeting the VA’s own standard for timely access. By 2022, that average had risen to over 33 days. Today, across the 21 VA Medical Centers in this study, it stands at 35.9 days — nearly double the standard.

There is a modest bright spot: wait times improved slightly over the six months studied, dropping from 37.2 days to 34.5 days. But even with that improvement, only 3 of 21 sites met the VA’s 20-day standard — down from 5 in the prior period. The average looks better, but fewer hospitals are actually hitting the mark.

And even that improvement comes with a caveat. During this same period, the VA expanded yearlong community care authorizations, pushing more veterans to private-sector providers. Fewer veterans waiting in line at VA can make wait times look better on paper — without VA’s capacity actually improving.

The Veterans Who Need It Most

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Post-9/11 Veterans

Veterans who served after 9/11 carry unique health risks — traumatic brain injuries from blast exposure, lung damage and cancers linked to burn pits and other toxic exposures. Congress passed the PACT Act to ensure these veterans could access the specialized care they earned.

But at the 21 VA Medical Centers studied, the specialties these veterans depend on are trending in the wrong direction.

Neurology — critical for veterans with traumatic brain injuries — had an average wait time of 76.3 days. Wait times increased at 13 sites and decreased at only 6. Every single site reporting neurology data exceeded the VA’s own 28-day standard for specialty care.

Oncology — critical for veterans with toxic exposure cancers — had an average wait time of 46.6 days, an increase of over 6 days. Wait times increased at 14 sites and decreased at 7.

Pulmonology — critical for veterans with burn pit lung damage — had an average wait time of 45.1 days, an increase of 2.7 days. Wait times increased at 16 sites and decreased at only 5.

Women Veterans

Women are the fastest-growing group of veterans using VA health care. They are more likely to rely exclusively on VA for their care, and more likely to have a history of military sexual trauma — which is associated with long-term impacts on physical and mental health.

Since the staffing cuts began, wait times for women’s health appointments increased at 11 of 15 sites reporting data, with an average increase of 9 days. Wait times for OB/GYN appointments increased at 13 of 20 sites, with an average increase of 3.8 days.

Combined across both women-specific specialties, the average wait time went from 33.9 days up to 40.3 days — an increase of 6.4 days.

The Mental Health Crisis They’re Hiding

The Numbers

VA leadership has pointed to mental health wait times holding steady. And on the surface, the numbers seem to back that up — individual mental health appointment wait times increased by less than half a day, to an average of 27.4 days.

But that single number obscures what’s actually happening.

Wait times for group mental health therapy — reported at only 8 of the 21 sites studied — increased at 6 of those sites, with an average increase of nearly 12 days to 29 days. At Hampton, Virginia, group therapy wait times jumped from 30 days to 87. At Togus, Maine, from 25 days to 68.

Wait times for PTSD-specific care, substance use disorder treatment, and other specialized mental health services increased at 12 sites and decreased at only 5, with an average increase of 4 days to 21.8 days.

Wait times for mental health care integrated into primary care — the model that lets veterans get help without a separate referral — increased at 12 of 19 sites reporting data.

When all types of VA mental health care are averaged together, wait times increased from 21.6 days to 23.5 days — now exceeding the VA’s own 20-day mental health standard.

As the report notes, ensuring veterans never end up waiting for a VA appointment, even when that is their stated preference, could artificially deflate wait times.

What Veterans Are Actually Being Told

And the official numbers may not tell the whole story.

When a veteran at the East Orange, New Jersey VA Medical Center asked the facility directly about scheduling a mental health appointment on March 2, 2026, the online wait time listed 15 days for new patients. The facility told the veteran 35 to 45 days.

When a veteran at the Washington, D.C. VA Medical Center asked the same question on February 25, 2026, the online wait time listed 7 days. The facility told the veteran approximately 4 months — and said the VA system was no longer offering longer-term therapy at all, only time-limited courses of treatment. Veterans who needed more would be referred to outside providers.

These discrepancies raise serious questions about whether the wait times VA reports publicly reflect what veterans actually experience.

The VA Can Be the Gold Standard Again

VA isn’t failing veterans. It’s being failed.

Research consistently shows that VA provides higher quality, more culturally competent, and more evidence-based care than the private sector — care tailored to veterans who carry a heavy health burden and whose experiences are foreign to most community-based providers.

Some argue the answer is to send more veterans to private-sector doctors. But the private sector does not have the capacity or specializations needed to meet the burden of shifting veteran care outside VA. Rural areas already face physician shortages. The country faces a significant shortage of mental health professionals. And every veteran pushed to a private provider costs VA more — outside referrals come with a significant financial burden that further drains VA’s budget, artificially bolstering political arguments against its cost-effectiveness.

The solution is not to abandon VA. The solution is to fund it, staff it, and hold its leadership accountable to the veterans it serves.

Since the recent rounds of cuts and staffing reductions, wait times have increased at the majority of VA Medical Centers studied, in the majority of specialties, with the sharpest impacts on the care post-9/11 veterans, women veterans, and veterans seeking mental health treatment depend on most.

The ongoing damage to VA direct care system could have devastating long-term effects — not only for veterans, but for the broader U.S. health care system, given VA’s critical role in training providers, conducting research, and serving as a backstop in times of national crisis.

Without intervention by policymakers and legislators, it is likely that the harm to the VA direct care system will become irreparable.

The United States owes no less to those who have sworn an oath and risked their lives to protect our nation.

About Vet Voice Foundation

Vet Voice Foundation is a national, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization that works to strengthen American democracy by engaging veterans and military families in civic life. Representing more than two million veterans, service members, and their families, the organization leverages the credibility and lived experience of those who have served to build trust across political and cultural divides. Through a combination of public education, storytelling, policy engagement, and partnerships with local and national organizations, Vet Voice Foundation elevates veteran voices on issues ranging from strengthening democratic institutions to supporting military families. Our work is grounded in the belief that veterans can help bridge divides and ensure the country lives up to its highest ideals. Learn more at www.vvfnd.org