Sounds like they might be getting a lot of pressure from above to get as many patients seen for initial evals within certain timelines, perhaps to avoid community care. Some hospital leadership feel more pressure to keep services in house because the more that folks go into community care, the more it impacts the hospital/dept's annual operating budget as community care dollars come out of the general operating budget for mental health (salaries, facilities, travel, etc). And at other places, community care is widely offered and even recommended over VA care due to known, long-term staffing issues and wait times.
Some of this may be genuinely out of your supervisor's hands. I think there has been a recent national (?) push to outsource all/more C&Ps to private contractors to free up VA psychologists for therapy. Prior to leaving my last facility about a year ago, they transferred the remaining C&P only psychologists into other roles (against their desire) and eliminated that department. At my current facility, none of the staff psychologists do any C&P evals while there are sites around the country that still have staff involved in C&Ps.
Hate to say it but if you're at a busy BHIP, I highly, highly doubt this would/could happen. If you're fully booked out and your next available/next 3rd available apt is weeks or even months out, there would literally be negative incentive for your direct supervisor, chief of psychology, and ACOS to reduce your open slots even further to accommodate new assessment slots. And given the option of potentially retaining you for longer or keeping open maximum access, I'm pretty certain they will choose keeping open access virtually every time. All of us are ultimately cogs in the machine and if any of us left a position, it's just a matter of time before somebody else gets slotted in.
Laundry, dishes. mopping...are THE BEST things about telework. I'm sorry, I meant longs lunch, meeting friends for early games, child-care needs, grocery, errands, TV in the office.
