OIG Determination of Veterans Health Administration’s Occupational Staffing Shortages

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted its second of several determinations of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) occupations with the largest staffing shortages, as required by Section 301 of the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014. We interpreted “largest staffing shortage” to encompass broader deliberation than simply the number needed to replace or backfill vacant positions for an occupation and refer to occupations that met broader criteria as critical need occupations. We performed a rule-based analysis of VHA data to identify critical need occupations, analyzed data on gains and losses for these occupations, and assessed VHA’s progress with implementing staffing models. We determined that the top five critical need occupations were Medical Officer, Nurse, Psychologist, Physician Assistant, and Physical Therapist. The identification of these occupations remains unchanged from our initial determination reported in January 2015. Our analysis of staffing gains and losses shows that for these critical need occupations, a significant percentage of total gains was offset by losses. We determined that the number of regrettable losses (that is, resignations and transfers to other government agencies) for many critical need occupations was high. This analysis likely does not capture the effect of the 2014 Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, as that law was implemented on August 7, 2014, and our analysis only includes data up until September 30, 2014. However, our analysis does provide an understanding of the historical pattern of staffing changes at VHA leading up to the enactment of that law. Further, we found that VHA’s staffing model is in development and consists of different models covering distinct areas of VHA staffing needs. VHA is working on extending the Specialty Productivity Access Report and Quadrant staffing tool to more occupations. We made two recommendations.