NEW YORK — Data released by Veterans Affairs officials earlier this week appeared to confirm that new patients at the agency’s medical centers were routinely waiting 30, 50 or even more than 90 days to see a doctor. It turns out those statistics came with some big caveats.

Average wait times at many of the facilities are likely much shorter, Philip Matkovsky, an assistant deputy undersecretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told The Associated Press on Friday.

He said information about patients who received care very quickly was left out of the analysis for technical reasons.

“They are valid numbers,” he said of audit results issued Monday, but acknowledged that the exclusion of those receiving swift care and other factors led to longer average reported wait times for some facilities than actually experienced by veterans.

One reason for the disparity is that the audit essentially represented a look into future doctor visits, while another VA data system assessed wait times by looking at the past, Matkovsky said.

The bottom line, though, he added, remains unchanged: Many veterans are still waiting too long for care.

Since Monday’s release of average wait time data by VA headquarters officials in Washington, administrators at local VA medical centers have been questioning the announced audit results, saying they didn’t jibe with internal data showing shorter waits.

“Our numbers are significantly better than what was released,” said Dr. Jeffrey Ryan, the associate chief of staff at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago. The audit had pegged average wait times there for new primary care patients at 41 days. Ryan said the real wait was a fraction of that, typically just a day or two.

For the audit, investigators essentially took a snapshot of all appointments in the VA’s medical scheduling system as it existed on May 15. The average wait times in the audit report were based on the time elapsed between when those appointments were requested and when they were scheduled to occur.