“We are not cutting benefits,” Lawrence said during a press availability to discuss the VA’s embrace of electronic health records. “If anything, it’s just the opposite. We’re taking the savings from the actions we’ve previously (taken), hiring more doctors, hiring more nurses, hiring people who adjudicate our benefits claims, so that we can provide better care to our veterans.”
Earlier this month, the VA said a national RIF (or reduction in force) would be unnecessary after the department lost some 17,000 employees since January.
Instead, the VA said it was on pace to reduce its number of employees by nearly 30,000 nationwide by the end of September, the end of the federal government’s fiscal year.
“We announced we are not going to do the nationwide RIF we had talked about early on,” Lawrence said. “The secretary (Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins) talked about it early on. Based on what we’re seeing with folks who are taking the retirement and leaving us, we think we’ll hit where we need to be by the end of the (fiscal) year more naturally.”
However, he added: “We reserve the right to continue to look at efficiencies and adjust staff and streamline from time to time, but it won’t be the large reduction in force that was initially talked about.”
Lawrence was in Dayton to discuss the Federal Electronic Health Record system that is being installed at the Dayton VA and elsewhere, expected to be completed in June 2026.
The system will allow a veteran’s full medical history to be accessed in one location online by users anywhere, advocates have said.
“They’re in the process of figuring that out,” Lawrence said when asked if implementation of electronic health records will mean new hiring locally in Dayton. “But some of the (requirements) will mean (hiring), yes, temporarily. As you know, when any electronic health record is implemented, as I understand it, there’s a decrease in productivity as the doctors and the nurses, the providers, learn new things. There will be some of that, there will be some additional hiring to deal with some of the nuances.”
He said at another point: “Everything in health care is technology-oriented. We’re definitely hiring there as well.”
Earlier this year, there were about 2,355 full-time employees at the Dayton VA Medical Center. Local VA spokespeople have said there have not been large job losses locally since the Trump administration took office.
The Dayton VA Medical Center, found on the VA’s West Third Street campus, will be among nine VA medical facilities that will move to the Electronic Health Record system next year, the Department of Veterans Affairs has said.
When operable, the system will allow VA care-providers anywhere to access detailed health records tied to each veteran.
Phasing in of the system is “on schedule,” Lawrence said.
As the system is put in place, the Dayton medical center has been undergoing a $55.6 million information technology infrastructure upgrade, Jennifer DeFrancesco, the director of the Medical Center, told the Dayton Daily News in April.
“This is a real big value to our veterans,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence is the department’s second-in-command and chief operating officer directing policy and operations
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