“O ur staffing in the ER is beyond dire now,” said Heather Fallon, a nurse in the emergency department at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago who had long been dreading the arrival of Sept. 30, the day the fiscal year came to an end.

That was the day she says she lost two nurses — and the facility lost nine staffers in total — whose contracts ended, putting further strain on her team, which has seen an increase in patients this year. Veteran Affairs Secretary Doug Collins had vowed to have reduced the size of the agency by 30,000 positions by that date without impacting health services for veterans.

“We are understaffed,” Fallon said. “We don’t have all of the services that we would have had on a regular basis.”

Meanwhile, wait times have increased f

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