VA is a massive org, this is not a particularly large number of analysts for a healthcare system of this size (or honestly any complex org).
I come from a small country, in total comparable to the 6 million veterans mentioned here.
1400 analysts is just a lot and I wouldn't imagine for example our national healthcare service could ever employ that amount of analysts?
Hm, or would they? It would make a pretty big dent in the total amount of persons in that field in our country.
The reason there are 1400 analysts: research studies each require one or two analysts. At this very moment, there are thousands of research studies taking place in the US medical system. Without these number of analysts, you'd have to completely revamp the system, killing all current projects, all current code, and creating a HUGE HUGE headache for everyone, not to mention laying off 1000+ through a system which it is NOT easy to layoff individuals through.
As a matter of fact, they want to transition to a new data infrastructure at the VA, but it's been delayed many times and the logistics have been very vague.
We really should commission 2 more analysts to figure this out...