More than one year after President Donald Trump’s administration sought to reduce the federal workforce, the Indianapolis hospital that provides care to veterans has lost a higher percentage of medical staff than most other Veterans Affairs facilities, according to internal data obtained by IndyStar.
While the VA has historically struggled to stay fully staffed, Indiana employees and advocates told IndyStar that the president’s approach to the federal workforce — whether his rhetoric, policy changes or downsizing efforts — has created a downward spiral.
Today, the hospital is struggling with lengthy wait times for new patients, according to VA data and facility employees. But if the staffing issues persist, one advocate warns, it could also begin to compromise care.
Some early indicators appear grim: the hospital’s 30-day mortality rate hit the highest point in around two years in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, internal documents show.
The Richard L. Roudebush Veterans’ Administration Medical Center has lost more than 100 net full-time and part-time medical personnel since Trump took office in January 2025, according to VA data obtained by IndyStar, with some fields shedding more than a tenth of its staff.
The staffing reductions have forced overburdened employees to prioritize the most severe cases, said Craig Vogt, president of the union representing the hospital’s workers, and little is being done to correct course.
“We’re destroying the years of work to reverse staffing shortages that we finally were catching up on,” Vogt said, “and now we’ve literally just wiped all that out in a matter of months.”
A spokesperson for the VA disputed that characterization in a statement to IndyStar, and said the internal statistics obtained by IndyStar don’t paint a full picture. When including intermittent and contracted medical staff, Pete Kasperowicz, press secretary for the VA, said there was a net gain of medical employees, but did not respond to requests for data showing the net gain. He added that the VA was hiring 116 more employees.
“We are extraordinarily disappointed in the Indianapolis Star, which is intentionally stitching together anonymous hearsay and cherrypicked data to paint a false picture of VA,” Kasperowicz said. “The truth is that VA is working much better under the second Trump Administration than it was under Joe Biden.”
The success of the VA is not tied to its number of employees, Kasperowicz said, mentioning that the vacancy rate had fallen below what it was during the Biden administration. After publication of the story, the VA told IndyStar that 2025’s vacancy rate was lower than three of four years under Biden and remained low after the VA eliminated positions.
While Indianapolis has lost a higher percentage of registered nurses and medical officers than most other VA facilities, the struggles at the Indianapolis hospital aren’t unique.
The Trump administration ordered a federal hiring freeze in January 2025, with exemptions for “mission critical” positions like doctors and nurses within the VA. But it’s in those areas that full- and part-time staffing is dwindling: Vogt attributes it to the government’s attitude toward and treatment of federal employees, which he said makes the VA an unattractive option for health care workers whose skills are in high demand across the country.
The government has also sought to slim the VA workforce through less direct means. A leaked memo from March 2025 showed the administration sought to cut nearly 80,000 VA jobs, but by the summer leaders in the administration announced the action was no longer necessary since they expected 30,000 employees would leave voluntarily by September of that year.
One Indianapolis VA employee who requested anonymity due to fear of losing her job said working at the facility has been “havoc.” And, she said, it’s far different than Trump’s first term in office.
Thousands of nurses, physicians and other employees have left VA hospitals nationally since the end of 2024, leaving a far leaner staff to pick up the slack.
In Indianapolis, staff worked nearly 18,000 more overtime hours in 2025 than they did in 2024, according to internal data. Nurses are skipping breaks and lunches to attend to patients, Vogt said.
“(Nurses) will be there all night and then at 6 a.m. they’re told ‘You can’t go home for another four hours,'” Vogt said. “It’s inhumane.”
The VA said overtime is an essential part of offering veterans appointments outside of typical hours.
“These early-morning, evening, and weekend appointments are giving Veterans more timely and convenient options for care,” Kasperowicz said.
Hospitals across the nation have struggled with staff as the country, including Indiana, faces a nursing shortage. The issue worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic, which sent many nurses into different careers.
Veteran care at stake
While the personnel losses have increased the pressures on remaining staff, they’ve managed to maintain the quality of care for veterans, Vogt said — at least for now.
But internal VA data on 30-day mortality rates for the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year — which for the federal government, starts in October — could offer a glimpse at how the facility is faring with a slimmer staff.
The rate, which compares expected patient deaths with actual deaths in a 30-day period, shot up by more than a quarter from the previous period.
While it’s unclear if the increase can be directly attributed to staff losses, Vogt sees it as a troubling indicator. Multiple studies on nurse-to-patient ratios have suggested having more staff can improve patient outcomes and reduce mortality.
“The less nurses you have, the more people die,” he said.
Kasperowicz, the VA hospital spokesperson, said the mortality rate fluctuates, but “the rolling average mortality rate for the VA Indiana Health Care System remains under its target.” The VA Indiana Health Care System includes the Indianapolis hospital, plus a variety of smaller clinics in the area.
Wait times appear to be lengthening, too, internal data shows. New patient primary care wait times trended higher in the tail end of 2025, and by February had climbed to an average of 32 days, higher than the previous period and 12 days off target. One employee attributed those delays to the challenge with staffing.
Kasperowicz said the average wait time for new primary care patients was actually longer than the internal data IndyStar reviewed — 45 days — but said wait times for current patients are just 10 days, and that department-wide wait times have fallen in four of six major categories of care under Trump.
Wait times for medical care have been rising across major metropolitan areas outside of the VA, too, according to a survey conducted in January and February 2025 by AMN Healthcare, a health workforce company. The average time it took to see a family medicine doctor, a subcategory of primary care analyzed in the survey, was 23.5 days across the cities surveyed, though Indianapolis was not included.
Improving those metrics while the hospital is short on staff could prove difficult, Vogt said.
“You’re so busy putting out the current emergency,” he said, “you don’t have time to prevent the next one.”
‘New normal’
One employee said that while the chaos began during the pandemic, conditions under Trump have worsened. Several employees left because they didn’t want to work under the president, she said, while the remaining staff have adapted to the mayhem.
“This is the new normal,” she said.
That uncertainty has made it more difficult to fill employment gaps. A review of the Indianapolis facility in March 2025 found some primary care providers had turned down job offers because of uncertainty within the federal government, while facility leaders described staff as “in a state of shock” over federal restructuring.
The Indianapolis facility ranks near the top of a list of 120 VA medical centers and health care systems in the nation for medical staff percentage losses between January 2025 and February 2026. For example, Indianapolis ranked 21st for its decline in registered nurses and 35th for medical officers, according to an IndyStar analysis of internal staffing data for full- and part-time employees.
That’s on top of the 4,434 severe occupational staffing shortages at VA health care facilities across the country in fiscal year 2025, the VA’s Office of Inspector General found, 50% higher than the previous fiscal year. The VA called the report “completely subjective, not standardized and unreliable.”
An RN working in home-based primary care at the Indianapolis hospital said he’s considering retirement after more than a decade of work for the VA. He still wants to work, but not with the current conditions. Everyone is overworked at the VA hospital, he said.
“The only part of my job I like is actually the face-to-face visits with the veterans,” the employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, said.
While certain changes to the VA since Trump took office have been material, such as a return to the office mandate and a hiring freeze with some exceptions, another burden is the shift in attitude toward federal employees, employees say. Trump has called the federal workforce “crooked” and accused them of “destroying the country.”
“I don’t feel valued at all,” the RN, who previously worked from home in between visits with veterans, said.
The VA said “essentially all” employees at the facility have always worked in person.
A ‘sledgehammer’ to the federal workforce
In September 2025, a VA employee at a California medical center sent a letter to Congress sounding the alarm on staffing reductions happening at VA facilities across the country.
He was joined by hundreds of current and former health care workers, veterans and VA-affiliated medical school faculty who signed the letter, where they expressed concern that “significant staff reductions were pursued and achieved via buyouts and other means … in a VHA system already straining to meet demand.”
The administration’s proposal of a 17% cut in discretionary spending for the VA’s direct care budget, coupled with the staff attrition throughout 2025, will harm all veterans, the letter warned.
“When my country called, I served with distinction, honesty, and consistent good faith, as an SP5, overseas, for 2.5 years,” one signer wrote. “I need the VA services to continue as they are now.”
In an interview with IndyStar, the California employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, framed the Trump administration’s approach to the VA as an intentional effort to weaken public services in favor of expanding a private model.
“There has been a movement … to make the VA look like this sort of dysfunctional, bloated bureaucracy that’s failing veterans,” he said.
The VA called such sentiments “far-left canard that has been thoroughly debunked by the department’s massive growth over the years.”
One Hoosier veteran and advocate, Lisa Wilken, agreed that the administration’s current course of action would harm veterans. Her relatives who work at the VA hospital are terrified of losing their jobs in the new political climate, she said — a fear that she worries will discourage whistleblowers.
“That scares me as a veteran,” Wilken said.
She thinks the VA’s health care system needs to be improved, including eliminating the bureaucracy that she believes has made it slow to get an appointment for things like dental care. But privatization isn’t the answer, she said, even as the Trump administration appears to embrace it. The VA has denied moving to privatize care.
In November 2025, Congress granted the VA its discretionary spending request for less direct care money and a 50% increase for its Veterans Community Care Program, where veterans are served by outside providers. Those who favor increased community care funding believe it will increase flexibility and reduce wait times, while critics point to ballooning community care costs and instances where insurance companies have overcharged the government. The approved budget also requires the VA to limit staff losses and meet wait time targets.
Vogt doesn’t oppose efforts to trim bureaucracy but said the Trump administration’s efforts have gone too far.
“They’re taking a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel,” he said.
This story has been updated to provide additional information shared by a VA spokesperson after publication.
Contact breaking politics reporter Marissa Meador at mmeador@indystar.com or find her on X at @marissa_meador.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Under President Trump, Indianapolis VA hospital lost scores of doctors and nurses
Reporting by Marissa Meador, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
