The VA plans to change the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) so that: (1) VHA Central Office focuses on setting policy goals and handling financial management, oversight, and compliance; (2) new or reconfigured Operations Centers and the Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) take those policies and create operational, quality, and performance standards for more than 1,300 VA medical facilities; and (3) local VA health care systems (which run more than 170 medical centers and nearly 1,200 outpatient sites) get clearer guidance and more decision‑making authority. The department also says it will reduce overlapping “middle manager” layers with duplicative responsibilities, but the exact offices and positions to be moved, merged, or eliminated will not be detailed until early 2026.
According to VA, this reorganization is aimed at management and should not change where Veterans receive care or the staffing and day‑to‑day operations at VA medical centers and clinics. The department says the goal is clearer leadership and faster decisions “behind the scenes,” while maintaining existing staffing levels at facilities; separately, VA has said that removing about 25,000 open, unfilled positions (described as COVID‑era roles) will not remove current employees or reduce Veteran care.
VA says it will announce the precise organizational and personnel changes in early 2026, and then implement them over the following 18 to 24 months. That means the bulk of the reorganization is expected to roll out through roughly mid‑ to late‑2027, though exact milestones have not yet been published.
In VA’s description, “empowering local hospital directors” mainly means giving VA health care systems (and their leaders) clearer guidance from above and more authority to make decisions locally, while central office focuses on policy and VISNs/Operations Centers focus on implementation and standards. VA has not yet said how this empowerment will be defined in concrete terms or measured (for example, through specific performance metrics or surveys), so no formal measurement approach is publicly available as of December 2025.
Public documents so far only say that VHA’s current structure has many middle‑management roles with overlapping responsibilities, and that the reorganization will reduce these “duplicative management layers” and consolidate responsibilities. VA has not identified which specific program offices, VISN roles, or other layers will be cut or merged, nor how many filled positions might be moved or eliminated; it stresses that the initiative is not a reduction in force and that it does not expect a significant change in overall staff levels. Around the same time, VA has also said it will remove about 25,000 open, unfilled positions (described as COVID‑era roles), but has emphasized that no current employees are being removed and that this will have “zero impact on Veteran care.”
VA plans to make policy more consistent by centralizing policy‑making and oversight in VHA Central Office, then having Operations Centers and VISNs translate those policies into uniform operational, quality, and performance standards for all VA facilities. Central Office is also being assigned explicit oversight and compliance responsibilities, which is intended to enforce those standards; however, VA has not yet detailed the specific tools (such as new audits, dashboards, or performance targets) it will use to monitor consistency across facilities.
VA has said it briefed Congress on the plan and is providing official congressional notification, and it cites past reviews by the VA Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office as key inputs into the reorganization. Beyond this, VA has not announced any formal public comment period or structured stakeholder‑input process specific to the reorganization, so as of December 2025 there is no publicly described mechanism for Veterans or the general public to submit comments on the plan beyond normal channels (such as contacting members of Congress or VA directly).