Vindman Urges VA Secretary to Fully Staff Spotsylvania VA Health Care Center as Wait Times Reach 88 Days

Vindman Initiated Outreach with Secretary Collins One Year Ago Today; This is Now the Fifth Letter Sent Raising Concerns About Staffing Shortages & Appointment Wait Times

Washington, D.C. - Congressman Eugene Vindman (Va.-07) today sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins demanding immediate action to ensure that the Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care Center in Spotsylvania County is fully staffed and operational.

This marks the fifth letter Vindman has sent to Secretary Collins raising these concerns, beginning one year ago today on April 10, 2025, yet none have received a substantive response. A previously scheduled in-person meeting to address the staffing shortages and operational delays was also canceled, further delaying progress.

The ongoing understaffing at the facility is having real consequences for Virginia's veteran community, with wait times for mental health appointments reaching 88 days at the Fredericksburg facility. Many veterans have been forced to travel hours to receive care, creating unnecessary burdens and barriers to essential health services.

In his latest letter, Vindman calls for accountability and a clear timeline to bring the facility to full capacity, ensuring our nation's veterans receive the care they earned through their service.

"Wait times for mental health appointments in Fredericksburg have stretched to 88 days, and instead of hiring additional staff to address this crisis, VA leadership is cutting mental health and suicide prevention positions," Vindman wrote in his letter. "Meanwhile, across the country, thousands of doctors, nurses, and schedulers have retired as a direct result of your policies. This turnover has left 1.2 million veterans without an assigned VA primary care provider."

He continued, "Actions are louder than words, and your actions demonstrate that your primary objective is to eliminate jobs for care providers, even at the expense of delaying essential services for my constituents. These decisions have real consequences and are already harming veterans and their families. For the sake of those you are charged with serving, I urge you to abandon your slash-and-burn approach to the staffing and prioritize making the investments necessary to ensure the health and dignity of our servicemembers."

Read the full letter below.

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Dear Secretary Collins,

For a year, I have urged you to address unacceptable staffing shortages at the Veterans Administration (VA) Fredericksburg Health Care Center. Despite numerous letters, direct conversations, and engagement through official channels, veterans from my district continue to suffer because of your failure to act. To add insult to injury, your agency recently announced additional cuts across not only Virginia, but the entire country that target critical areas of care such as mental health and suicide prevention. This conduct demonstrates a clear prioritization of politics over the well-being of America's heroes. As I will lay out below, your decision to ignore Virginia's veterans, combined with your insistence on eliminating VA jobs, reflects a broad bureaucratic indifference to quality of care that is harming the veterans you claim to serve.

On February 28, 2025, the VA opened a new facility in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The VA's own press release boasted it was a "state-of the-art" complex that "is the nation's largest VA health care clinic spanning more than 470,000 feet." However, the facility was not fully staffed, and it became clear that the staffing plan was inadequate and not commensurate with the scale of the operation. On April 10, 2025, I wrote to you on behalf of VA patients in my district, calling your attention to the inadequate staffing levels. I did not receive a response until two months later, in June, when a member of your Congressional Liaison Office offered to speak with my team. While the assurances provided during that meeting were encouraging, the follow-up letter you forwarded to my office some days later was wholly insufficient and failed to mention a single substantive commitment.

Later that same month, I happened to see you in person and requested a meeting where we could discuss the needs of the 72,000 veterans who are my constituents. At the time, you agreed. Your staff proposed tentative dates throughout the following weeks until late August when they told my office I would have to wait until later. I have yet to hear from you on this point.

Starting in early October, I sent more frequent letters demanding clarity on the agency's plans for the Fredericksburg Center. After my third letter, a Senior Advisor in your Congressional Liaison Office called and emailed my Chief of Staff, indicating that an official response from the agency would be forthcoming.

It took your office until February of 2026 to respond to my outreach from October 2025. What's more, the barely one-page letter you sent once again contained no substantive commitments and offered evasive responses to the questions raised in my previous correspondence.

That brings us to today. Over the past 12 months, I have received only two official communications from your agency that were relevant to the issues at hand, and both lacked any meaningful commitments. A limited level of correspondence might be understandable if significant progress were being made to improve VA services. However, your agency's own data demonstrates that veterans are facing an increasingly opaque care system that appears completely indifferent to their needs and health outcomes.

Wait times for new individual mental health appointments in Fredericksburg have stretched to 88 days, and instead of hiring additional staff to address this crisis, VA leadership is cutting mental health and suicide prevention positions. Meanwhile, across the country, thousands of doctors, nurses, and schedulers have retired as a direct result of your policies. This turnover has left 1.2 million veterans without an assigned VA primary care provider. Staffing losses and retirements are also undermining research and have been deemed responsible for delaying the launch of critical trials for cancer and addiction treatments. As if these failures were not enough, you then surreptitiously used emergency powers to significantly reduce the quality of care for disabled veterans by redefining disability itself, stripping veterans of their vital benefits simply because they are receiving treatment or taking medication.

Mr. Secretary, your unwillingness to engage with me, while the quality of care at the VA deteriorates before your eyes, makes it clear that you are prioritizing politics over the well-being of veterans. Actions are louder than words, and your actions demonstrate that your primary objective is to eliminate jobs for care providers, even at the expense of delaying essential services for my constituents. These decisions have real consequences and are already harming veterans and their families. For the sake of those you are charged with serving, I urge you to abandon your slash-and-burn approach to the staffing and prioritize making the investments necessary to ensure the health and dignity of our servicemembers. It is imperative that you take immediate and decisive action to increase resources and hiring in Fredericksburg and at other critical VA facilities around the country.

Despite my immense frustration, I am always available to discuss these and any veteran's matters at any time you are willing to meet. I truly hope you capitalize on this opportunity to reverse course. Regardless of your response, I will continue everything in my power to champion veterans in my district and nationwide.

Please provide complete responses, along with all necessary supporting materials, for the following inquiries no later than April 24, 2026:

1. As you can see below, and as I mentioned in the letter, the wait time for a new mental health appointment at the Fredericksburg VA Health Care Center is 88 days. This is unacceptable. What immediate steps are you taking to change this? What is your goal wait time for a new appointment? How long will it take you to achieve that goal?
2. Provide a comprehensive list of all vacant positions at the facility, specifying for each: job title, whether currently posted, current stage in the hiring process, and anticipated fill date.
3. Building on the above request, assure our community that the VA will have hired 100% of the positions by December 31, 2026 understanding that some frictional turnover will exist.
4. Your agency has communicated that it is eliminating vacant positions nationwide. Please describe whether this policy would result in a net increase or decrease in care professionals in positions related to primary care, mental health, and suicide prevention.
5. Specify which previously vacant positions at the Fredericksburg VA Health Care Center have been eliminated, including any mental health or suicide prevention positions. Provide detailed justifications for the elimination of each position and whether this was pursuant to the reduction initiatives implemented by the administration from January 20, 2025, to April 10, 2026.

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