VA secretary in Nashville pledges to keep health care ‘first priority' amid DOGE cuts

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17-03-2025

With tens of thousands of layoffs underway at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA Secretary Doug Collins said Monday during a stop in Nashville his goal in the agency's restructuring is providing better quality patient care while cutting bureaucracy and fixing long wait times.
For years, many VA facilities have struggled to provide high quality care for patients. The Memphis VA Medical Center, for instance, has received low ratings and scrutiny over patient safety issues and wait times.
'The VA has been the whipping post for a long time. It's been the thing everybody blames when it doesn't go right. It's been a place that, 'well, we can't get our service, we can't get this. And then on the other part, we'll just not do anything about it,'' Collins said. 'Those days are over.'
The Trump administration is planning an aggressive reorganization at the VA, including cutting up to 80,000 jobs, in an effort to trim the federal workforce by at least 15%.
'We will have some changes coming to the VA. There's going to be some reorganization,' Collins said Monday. 'But first and foremost, that reorganization is not going to be toward anything that takes away from care of our patients and our disability services.'
Collins visited the Nashville VA Medical Center on Monday morning alongside U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and U.S. Reps. Diana Harshbarger, R-Kingsport, and Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville. All three members of Congress that represent Nashville were notably absent: U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Columbia, U.S. Rep. John Rose, R-Cookeville, and veteran and physician U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Clarksville.
DOGE-led cuts at the VA have already impacted Tennessee. Since January, between 40 and 50 federal employees have been laid off or taken buyouts across Tennessee's VA facilities, including laborers, file clerks, and an interior designer.
'We're going to make sure that the first priority is our veterans, and our veterans are going to be at the forefront of everything we do,' Collins said. 'No benefits and no health care has been cut. … That's not even on the table.'
The VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System provides specialized health care services to more than 146,000 veterans in Middle Tennessee, southern Kentucky and North Georgia. For the first time in 2023, the Tennessee system received a 4-star rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Collins said health care providers and other roles essential to veterans services are protected from layoffs, and will continue to be. He denounced reports that positions are being 'randomly cut' from the agency as attempts to 'scare my veterans.'
'I'm not sure interior designers, laborers and file room clerks who were part of the first layoff that we had are actually affecting an appointment being missed or surgeries being canceled,' he said.
He acknowledged long wait times for appointments and issues accessing care have plagued the agency. But, he argued, problems 'didn't start five weeks ago" when President Donald Trump took office.
While many veterans have protested cuts ― even at Tennessee's state Capitol ― and shared concerns that staffing cuts would negatively impact patient services, Collins said infusion of funding and staff has not improved the agency's metrics.
'Explain to me how you added tens of billions of dollars – over $100 billion – and added almost 50 to 70,000 people in the last four years, and many of our metrics did not get better,' Collins said. 'How does that happen? Well, it tells me that maybe that's not the answer.'
Blackburn, who is a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, praised Collins' commitment to a "change of culture" at the agency, citing wait times of 30 to 70 days for primary care appointments.
He said restructuring the agency and eliminating positions isn't a new idea, pointing to tens of thousands of VA positions that were eliminated during bureaucracy cuts in the Clinton administration.
'Maybe it's time that we actually look at how we're actually delivering,' Collins said. 'Are the bureaucratic structures that we have at our hospitals, are they doing what they're supposed to be doing to actually help with patient quality?'
Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: VA Secretary Doug Collins in Nashville: Health care a 'first priority'