It was shocking last year when hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs were caught falsifying data to hide the long delays endured by patients needing medical care.

What’s even more shocking is that despite strenuous efforts to improve the system, more veterans are facing long waits than before. As The Times’s Richard Oppel Jr. has reported, the number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than at the height of last year’s crisis.

The problem may well get worse. The department, which operates a huge system of hospitals and clinics, expects a shortfall of about $2.5 billion in programs to treat veterans outside the department’s own facilities for the rest of this fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. It has asked Congress for permission to shift funds among various accounts to cover the shortfall, and leaders of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, though angry at the failure of the department to anticipate the problem, said they would work with other lawmakers to help cover the shortfall.

Image Credit... Bryan Thomas for The New York Times

To address the waiting lists, the department has hired almost 1,100 doctors since April 2014, as well as more than 2,700 nurses and almost 4,700 other critical personnel like scheduling clerks. It has also greatly expanded the amount of clinical space. Those steps allowed the agency to handle an additional 2.7 million appointments over 12 months.