The Veterans Affairs Maine Health Care system must eliminate hundreds of vacant positions as part of a federal directive to reorganize staff, according to a manager within the system with knowledge of the matter.

Some of those cuts have already taken place at Togus Veterans Administration Medical Center in Augusta, the system’s largest hospital, as multiple doctor and nursing positions have been eliminated, a second employee told the newspaper.

The health care system, which employs 1,821 people, has been unable to fill empty roles since a federal hiring freeze began earlier this year, leaving about 500 vacancies, according to a VA Maine employee who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.

Now, it must eliminate a majority of those positions, the employee said, igniting concerns about reductions to patient care.

A spokesperson for VA Maine would not confirm how many vacancies exist and how many will be eliminated. They said staffing and operations at the health care system “are not expected to change as part of the decision to remove unfilled positions.”

The Washington Post reported last week that the federal department plans to eliminate as many as 35,000 health care positions across the Veterans Health Administration this month, mostly unfilled jobs that include doctors, nurses and support staff.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday that it was reorganizing its managerial structure through a series of personnel changes.

Specific changes to personnel will be announced in 2026 and will take place over the next 18-24 months, the federal department said.

Sen. Angus King said the news that the Trump administration is further hollowing out the agency “is a disservice to everyone who has worn the uniform.”

“Cutting staff means more than cutting positions — it means cutting services and denying timely care to those who have earned these benefits,” King said Tuesday. “And it means asking the selfless medical professionals and support staff at the VA to do more with less.”

The changes come months after the department announced it was on pace to reduce total VA staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025, made possible through the federal hiring freeze and “normal attrition.”

Maine has already seen cuts this year: Several workers were fired from Togus in February for alleged poor performance, and the hospital’s radiology safety officer position narrowly avoided being eliminated in March by a federal plan to cancel hundreds of contracts.

“Our state is already facing a serious shortage of health care workers, ongoing hospital and clinic closures, and long travel times for medical services,” Rep. Chellie Pingree said Tuesday. “Rather than work to address the underlying challenges of why these positions were vacant in the first place, the Administration is choosing to ignore the issue by eliminating the jobs altogether.”

She said the move will force veterans to seek care outside the VA system and put more pressure on other providers.

Over the past year at the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, King said he has repeatedly asked administration representatives whether they had plans to cancel contracts or cut staff. He said it’s now clear they lied by omission.

“In those exchanges, they would claim they wouldn’t fire direct care workers, but didn’t address whether they would or would not fill direct care vacancies,” King said. “Their responses at the time seemed incomplete or evasive; in the light of these new reports, the VA staff’s denials seem outright dishonest.”

Veterans deserve to know about the changes that are happening now, the VA system manager said.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever going to make an announcement saying: ‘VA eliminated these many empty positions, and here’s what it means specifically for Maine,'” the manager said. “But I think people should know.”