VHA Facilities’ Collection and Oversight of Specialty Care Call Data

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a preliminary result advisory memorandum highlighting significant barriers to veterans’ access to specialty care—particularly radiology and mental health—at VA medical facilities. In November 2025, the OIG began a national review to assess whether facilities meet performance standards for answering veterans’ calls. The OIG found that 13 of 15 reviewed facilities lacked essential call data, making it impossible to evaluate veterans’ timely access to care. 

VA facilities and regional Veterans Integrated Service Networks must track metrics like call volume, speed of answer, and abandonment rates (calls where the caller hung up before anyone answered). However, nearly one million of 2.1 million call attempts from August 2024 through July 2025 lacked critical call data. Furthermore, out of the nearly one million untracked calls, at least 338,000 were to radiology clinics and 109,000 were to mental health clinics, putting veterans who may need timely and critical care at risk. This occurred because VA lacks a system to capture call performance data for specialty clinics that use individual or shared phone lines.

Veterans reported delays, frustration, and in some cases, resorted to in-person visits to schedule appointments. One spouse described repeated unanswered calls for a critical cancer-related radiology appointment. Despite the OIG’s January 2026 communication of these findings, only 19 of the 49 clinics planned to reconfigure systems to capture call data, while seven facilities had no plans to do so.

The lack of call performance data undermines VHA’s ability to identify and address access issues, potentially delaying care for vulnerable veterans. This finding is being disseminated to ensure all VHA medical facilities are aware of and can proactively start collecting and overseeing specialty care call data. The OIG’s review is ongoing, and a comprehensive report will follow.