Newly named Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert A. McDonald has wasted no time outlining a national recruitment effort to bring needed medical professionals into the VA, which could benefit the VA Montana Health Care System.

To provide timely access to care, the system must hire more clinicians, according to McDonald. He has vowed to recruit heavily and leverage existing relationships and affiliations that the VA has with academic institutions. And officials will talk directly to medical professionals about joining VA.

These actions will build on existing recruitment tools, including partnerships between local facilities and academic institutions, loan repayment programs and scholarship programs.

“Even more so than in other states, VA Montana has a shortage of medical professionals, which is one of the biggest reasons that veterans have to wait so long to see a doctor,” said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the state’s only member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “The VA’s new recruiting initiative will help incentivize more medical professionals to come work for VA Montana.”

McDonald’s approach includes partnering with the Department of Defense to recruit discharged health care professionals and combat medics, and improve the credentialing process for VA and its providers. Tester worked to get both provisions in the VA reform bill known as the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014.

“If a medical professional is credentialed to work for the Department of Defense, there is no reason they shouldn’t be credentialed to work at the VA,” Tester said. “This is a common-sense provision that will allow medical professionals to quickly transfer employment between agencies.”

In Billings, the new 70,000-square-foot VA clinic at 1766 Majestic Lane has struggled to recruit a full medical staff. After more than a year, recruiting efforts continue “relentlessly,” said Johnny Ginnity, acting director of the VA Montana Health Care System. All vacancies are advertised nationally and are supported by a national health care recruitment consultant. Physicians are offered recruitment incentives of up to 15 percent of their salary plus education and debt reduction of up to $120,000 and relocation expenses.

Despite the incentives, VA Montana is still looking for a urologist, ophthalmologist, part-time psychiatrist or full-time nurse practitioner and nurses.

“Our veterans receiving timely, high quality care is our No. 1 priority,” Ginnity said. “We are encouraged by Secretary McDonald’s initiatives. (They) will help expand availability of health care services and help veterans to receive the personalized, proactive, patient-centered care they need.”

Tester has invited McDonald to Montana to see for himself the challenges facing the state. Tester brought to Montana then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki as well as former VA Secretary James Peake. With their help, Tester secured seven new VA outpatient clinics in Cut Bank, Hamilton, Havre, Lewistown, Libby, Great Falls, Missoula and Plentywood. Clinic services in Billings were also expanded and a new mental health care facility was created in Helena.

McDonald’s pledge to recruit additional medical providers comes less than two months after the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to confirm him. The 61-year-old former chief executive of Procter & Gamble took the helm of the sprawling and embattled Department of Veterans Affairs after a scandal over the manipulation of patient wait-time data. The issue led to Shinseki’s ouster.

A federal investigation was launched to examine problems in the nationwide health care system. Montana’s sites at Fort Harrison — and Billings — are among about a third of the audited sites flagged for further investigation.

The VA inspector general’s report released last month found that in addition to 1,400 veterans waiting for appointments at the Phoenix VA, at least 3,500 more were on unofficial wait lists and at risk of never getting their requested or necessary appointments.