ATLANTA — Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is questioning how the layoffs of 2,400 Department of Veterans Affairs employees this month will affect veteran care and services in Georgia.
“It is mind-blowing that they would come in and immediately fire everyone they just worked so hard to hire,” Ossoff told Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray.
In a letter to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, Ossoff is asking for the VA to provide specific information on the locations, positions, and veteran status of staff who were terminated.
After firing 1,000 VA probationary employees Feb.15, the VA terminated 1,400 more employees they called “non mission critical” on Feb. 24.
Last week, Collins told Channel 2’s Richard Elliott that no one providing patient care was let go.
“No one who is front facing with health care with a veteran or the benefit side were affected,” Collins said.
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But Ossoff said investigators with his staff have personally talked to VA clinical staff who lost jobs.
“If the VA is claiming that no doctors or nurses or suicide prevention hotline staff were fired, I know that is not true. My investigators, my staff have confirmed that medical professionals and suicide prevention hotline staff were fired,” Ossoff said.
Channel 2 Action News reached out to the VA about those allegations.
A VA spokesperson told us: “VA did not lay off any doctors, nurses or mission critical staff as part of its probationary employee dismissals this month. In fact, hiring continues for more than 300,000 essential positions that provide VA health care and other vital services.”
Ossoff said when he’s pressed leaders at the Atlanta VA long wait times, they’ve emphasized the difficulties of hiring much-needed additional staff.
That’s exactly what Atlanta VA Medical Center director Kai Mentzer told Channel 2 Action News last month, before the terminations.
“Every month of 2024, we saw an average of 1,000 new patients a month enrolled into our health care system. Unfortunately, we cannot recruit and hire providers at the same pace as we’re seeing in those veterans,” Mentzer told Gray on Jan. 31.
An Atlanta VA spokesperson tells us that several primary care physicians who were in the process of being hired last month to work in Atlanta “are currently in pre-employment.”
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