Early last year, Dr. William Cutler felt a wave of anxiety sweep through the clinical corridors of the VA Medical Center in Northampton.
After spending 17 years as an internal medicine doctor and chronic pain specialist at the VA, Cutler retired last April. His breaking point came with a blunt mandate from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE: Either document five accomplishments he made each week, or risk losing his job.
Those mark a sharp departure from previous years. Under the Biden administration, the VA health system added tens of thousands of staff to keep pace with a dramatic expansion of VA benefits and eligibility and to address long-standing staffing shortages. Over the course of 2024, 667 full-time employees left the Veterans Health Administration in Massachusetts, but the agency added 694 employees — a net gain.
Although last year’s staff departures represent a small percentage of the VA’s overall workforce — less than 4 percent of the 7,300 employees in Massachusetts — they are notable for an agency that has long been strained by worker shortages.
In Massachusetts, full-time employees who left the VA last year had an average of 10 years on the job, corresponding to an estimated total loss of more than 8,000 years of collective experience.
Those hired to replace them tended to be much younger with far less experience. The VA in Massachusetts lost 156 staff members last year with more than 20 years of experience each and hired just three with similar levels, federal data show.
As for Dr. Cutler, he made one final gesture of defiance before retiring last spring from the Northampton center. When DOGE asked him to list five accomplishments at work, he replied with a pointed email, noting all the hours that employees had spent in town halls and Q&A sessions discussing DOGE-related emails.
He ended the message by writing, “I also cared for US veterans of our armed forces who suffer from chronic pain, but I doubt you would find that bit to be very interesting.”
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