Rep. Bobby Scott waived onto the House Veterans Affairs Committee today to ask Veterans Affairs Sec. Doug Collins about staffing shortages at the VA’s 10-month-old outpatient clinic in Chesapeake.

At the hearing, Collins confirmed that 335 out of 534 positions — about 62% — had been filled at the North Battlefield Outpatient Clinic. Another 166 are in active recruitment, 27 are pending and five are “just getting back to us.”

In April, the North Battlefield clinic opened its doors with 150 employees — about 30% of its expected full-time positions. The clinic, billed as a state-of-the-art facility, is designed to expand access to services for local veterans. Services include audiology, dental and eye care, laboratory and pathology, mental health care, primary care, physical medicine and rehabilitation, prosthetics and sensory aids, and radiology.

According to Veterans Affairs press secretary Peter Kasperowicz, VA’s North Battlefield Clinic is providing “all its core clinical services and has completed 55,325 scheduled appointments and provided 35,166 walk-in visits.”

The goal, the department said at the time, was to have the facility fully staffed by the end of January.

Scott, a Democrat from Newport News, questioned why the VA hadn’t met its staffing goal.

“Mr. Secretary, do you believe the decisions made by the administration regarding hiring freezes, proposed layoffs in the tens of thousands, termination of collective bargaining agreements and other personnel actions have adversely affected your ability to recruit personnel?” asked Scott.

Collins said he believes the recruitment issues faced by the VA are “similar to any other hospital system that you have in your district,” noting issues with finding the right people, getting enough applicants and being able to pay a competitive wage.

However, earlier in the hearing, Collins referred to the VA’s salary cap creating difficulty in competing with comparable hospitals.

“When you have starting salaries of $600,000 for anesthesiologists in the community and I can’t pay that, I don’t blame them for going somewhere else,” Collins said.

Hampton Roads is home to about 70,000 veterans. Issues like staffing shortages, long wait times and staff burnout have plagued VA clinics locally and nationwide.

Also at Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Jen Kiggans, who is a Navy veteran and former Hampton VA employee, put similar questions to Collins.

“I know there’s a provider shortage on the nurses and physician side [at the North Battlefield Outpatient Clinic], but what are we doing to make sure that facility is fully staffed?”

“Everything we possibly can,” said Collins.

Collins responded that the facility is “now doing every service it was provided to do,” but did not provide information on which positions at the North Battlefield clinic remain vacant.

Kiggans, a Virginia Beach Republican, also asked about the Hampton VA Medical Center, which in addition to staffing shortages, has had frequent leadership turnover over the past several years.

“We still do not have a director position that’s filled,” said Kiggans. “We did a lot of work just to change the current leadership that we felt was kind of a root part of the problem, but what are you doing and can you tell me the timeline for that leadership replacement?”

Collins agreed, noting that he found it “disheartening” how many interim executive leadership roles there were across the country. He said it is a priority for the administration to install permanent leadership.

Stacy Shorter, who is the president of the local chapter of AFGE — the union representing VA employees — agreed with Kiggans about a lack of consistent leadership at the Hampton VA hospital.

“That is a fact,” said Shorter. “I’ve been there for 18 years. I don’t even know how many directors we’ve had. That’s how many it’s been.”

As far as the staffing shortages at the North Battlefield clinic, Shorter said, these issues aren’t necessarily caused at the local level.

“I think that the hiring problems are caused because of the perfect storm of (the federal Office of Management and Budget’s) attempts to ‘traumatize the federal workforce,’ the fork in the road encouraging people to resign and retire early, the ‘tell me five things you did last week’ morale busters that came out of the DOGE committee, followed by the hiring freeze, the removal of positions off of the org chart and the gaslighting where people are repeatedly saying, ‘You’re overstaffed, you’re overstaffed.’”

“Well, the boots on the ground frontline employees are working themselves to death and having their vacation canceled because of lack of staffing. So one plus one does not equal three.”

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