The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) medical facilities reported a record 4,712 severe occupational staffing shortages this year.
A Sept. 11 report from the VA inspector general reveals these severe shortages spanned 389 occupations during Fiscal Year 2026, up from 4,434 shortages the year before.
All 139 VHA medical facilities reported at least one severe shortage. Individual facilities were designated as having as few as four shortages, at the VA Gulf Coast Healthcare System in Biloxi, Miss., and as many as 148 at the Birmingham VA Health Care System in Alabama.
The report is a descriptive review of what VHA officials submitted through a questionnaire. The OIG does not independently verify the accuracy of those responses. The watchdog cautioned that the figure reflects how difficult certain jobs are to fill, not a count of unfilled positions.
A “severe shortage” means an occupation is difficult to fill under federal hiring criteria, and the designation does not necessarily indicate vacant positions.
Facilities could report a severe shortage in an occupation whether it had zero vacancies or 100, the report notes.
Which Jobs Are Hardest to Fill
Roughly 97% of facilities reported severe shortages for medical officer positions, which include physicians, and 86% reported them for nurse positions.
Both have appeared on the list every year since the OIG began the reviews in 2014, even though the VA has authority to hire for those roles more quickly than for many others.
Practical nurse, a licensed title referring to frontline caregivers who provide foundational medical care, was the most frequently reported clinical shortage, cited by 59% of facilities.
Psychology, psychiatry, social work and nursing assistant positions rounded out the top five clinical roles. Among non-clinical roles, police was the most frequently reported, cited by 57% of facilities, followed by custodial worker, medical support assistant, food service worke and healthcare engineer.
VA Disputes
The staffing-shortage report has been a point of contention between the watchdog and the department.
As Military.com previously reported, the VA has argued that the OIG’s findings are not a reliable measure of actual staffing because they capture officials’ perceptions of hiring difficulty rather than vacancies.
It has pointed to its own vacancy rates for physicians and nurses, which it has said are in line with historical averages, as a truer gauge of staffing.
The OIG has framed the report differently. It is a congressionally mandated annual review, required under laws passed in 2014 and 2017, that is meant to help the VA secretary identify occupations for which to use special hiring authorities. It is not designed to audit vacant positions.
For this year’s report, the acting under-secretary for health concurred with the findings, and the OIG made no recommendations.
Persistent Problems
This is the 13th annual OIG report on VA occupational staffing shortages, and the ninth to measure them at the individual-facility level.
By the report’s own count, the total number of reported severe shortages has climbed in recent years—from 2,959 in FY24, to 4,434 in FY25 and 4,712 in FY26.
Nurse and medical officer shortages have been the most persistent. They draw attention because those occupations are crucial to delivering care. The VA can also appoint them without the competitive hiring steps that slow down other federal jobs.
The report made no recommendations, leaving the department to decide how to use the findings as it works to recruit for the occupations its own officials flagged as the hardest to fill.
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