'Are You Alarmed By The Numbers I Gave You?': Richard Blumenthal Grills VA Nom Over Staffing Cuts

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During a Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing earlier this month, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked President Trump's nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs John Bartrum about staffing cuts at the agency.

Transcript

00:00I, too, see that my time is up.

00:01Mr. Workman, I'll come back to you at the next opportunity,

00:04and I recognize Senator Blumenthal.

00:07Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

00:10As Senior Advisor to Secretary Collins, Mr. Barkman,

00:13were you involved in the decision to fire 83,000 VA employees?

00:21Was I involved in the decision to fire 82,000 employees?

00:24No.

00:24Were you involved in the decision to change that number to 30,000?

00:31No.

00:32Have you been involved in any workforce decisions previously relating to health care?

00:42I'm not involved in any of the HR decisions that come out of the HR side.

00:48Are you alarmed by the numbers that I gave you as to the 1,720 registered nurses,

00:56nearly 600 physicians, front-line doctors, nurses, psychologists, police officers,

01:06leaving as a result of the resignations, firings, hiring freezes, just so far?

01:18So what I would say is that I'm not aware of any firings there have been.

01:24Well, are you alarmed by those numbers?

01:26But there are force restructuring tools out there,

01:28but there's also numbers of people that change in the system.

01:32And in our system every year, we have about 40,000 people turnover in our system every year.

01:37So in a system where you have 470,000 people,

01:40I'm not alarmed by a shift of 500 or 700 or 7,500,

01:46because in systems as big, you have natural changeover.

01:50What I can say is that what I have seen in the VA

01:53is that our employees tend to stay longer, and we tend to recruit well.

01:59Are you aware that the loss of those thousands of staff have an effect on VA health care?

02:07Those numbers are not business as usual.

02:11I gave you the numbers for the similar period under the Biden administration.

02:16Even at the beginning of this fiscal year, there were 40,000 vacancies.

02:21Wouldn't you say that VA health care is in jeopardy

02:23as a result of the numbers of employees already lost

02:28even before the 30,000 that are planned by the end of the year?

02:33So what I'd also say is that what you may not have seen

02:38is that we've made changes to our system

02:41that have enhanced our ability to provide access

02:44and our ability to provide care.

02:46So you're not alarmed.

02:47So the expanding electronic scheduling system,

02:50which in the past one person would schedule

02:53for the community care process, would schedule,

02:56and these are generally nurses,

02:58would schedule five to seven patients a day.

03:02By expanding out what's called the EPS,

03:05the electronic scheduling process,

03:07we're now doing 20 to 24 on average per scheduler.

03:12So it expands access and it expands our ability for nurses.

03:14I'm going to interrupt you because my time is limited, Mr. Bartram.

03:16Yep.

03:17You're talking to me about maybe doing scheduling more efficiently.

03:21You're not talking about doctors, nurses, police, janitors.

03:25You and I talked.

03:26They're all part of a team.

03:28You've got to have a team.

03:30Are you, in your role as senior advisor,

03:34were you involved in the cancellation of contracts?

03:37I was involved in review of contracts

03:40that the career officials would recommend

03:42for re-scoping, de-scoping, or in some cases cancellation.

03:46What's the answer to that question?

03:49Yes or no?

03:50Yes.

03:50You were involved?

03:51Yes.

03:51Okay.

03:52Can you give me a number of contracts that have been canceled?

03:58No, I can't give you a number of contracts that have been canceled,

04:00but what I can say is I can get back to you for the record.

04:03I know that we have...

04:04Well, we've heard that again and again and again and again.

04:07You'll get back to us.

04:10We've heard it from nominees.

04:11We've heard it from the secretary.

04:14Information has been provided.

04:16It's incomplete.

04:17It's wrong.

04:18We're asking for basic transparency and disclosure here

04:22that we have a right to see.

04:24Veterans have a right to see.

04:25The public has a right to see.

04:27Let me ask you, do you have information about the wait times

04:31for community care?

04:34When veterans choose that option,

04:37do you have data about the wait times for community care?

04:44Yes, I do have some information.

05:27I'm not locating my page on that, sir, if I find it,

05:31but I can get back to you.

05:32But what I can say is that in our wait times,

05:35we have seen improvements in certain areas of wait times.

05:37Well, that's why, you know, we've asked for this data repeatedly.

05:42I'm not surprised you can't find it in your notebook there,

05:45or maybe I should say if you found it,

05:50it should have been provided to us long before now

05:52because we've requested it repeatedly.

05:55So, you can get back to me if you'd like.

05:58I welcome your willingness to do so.

06:00But, again, the reason why we have, in effect,

06:07asked for the regular order on these nominees

06:10is this kind of data simply hasn't been provided.

06:14My time has expired, Mr. Chairman.

06:15And I hope that we'll have time for additional questions.

06:21Senator Coverville.

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