WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs is telling skeptical members of Congress that it has fixed problems with its suicide hotline that were highlighted in a critical recent internal watchdog report.

A March 20 audit by the VA inspector general had found that nearly a third of calls to the Veterans Crisis Line as recently as November were bounced to back-up centers run by an outside contractor. The rollover calls happen when phone lines are busy, leading to possible waits of 30 minutes or more.

It was unwelcome news for VA Secretary David Shulkin, who has made suicide prevention a signature issue in the troubled agency, riven with scandal since reports of delays in treatment at veterans hospitals last year.

Today, the VA plans to tell the House Veterans Affairs Committee that the most serious issues with the veterans' crisis hotline have been resolved.

Calls to the Veterans Crisis Line that rolled over to backup centers steadily declined from 31 percent in early November, to just 0.1 percent as of March 25, according to internal VA data submitted to Congress and obtained by The Associated Press. That came despite growing workloads in which weekly calls to the hotline jumped from 10,558 in November to 13,966 last month, the VA said.