Massachusetts State-Operated Veterans’ Homes

Massachusetts runs two state veterans' homes, at Chelsea and at Holyoke, and chapter 115A governs them. Three features set them apart from the state homes elsewhere in this catalog: the eligibility definition is the generous one, the residency bar is the harshest, and the governance was rebuilt from the ground up after a disaster. Eligibility, in section 1, is one sentence: a person who is a veteran as defined in section 1 of chapter 115 shall be entitled to out-patient treatment at, admission to and hospitalization in a state-operated veterans' home, subject to the provisions of section 3. That cross-reference matters. It points at the broad HERO Act definition, which reaches anyone VA treats as a veteran, anyone with 90 days of active duty and a discharge other than dishonorable, and a Guard member or reservist with a service-connected disability or death including on training duty. It does not point at clause Forty-third, which runs the property tax and civil service provisions. A veteran with no wartime service is admissible here and is outside most of the rest of this file. Note also what section 1 grants. Out-patient treatment as well as admission and hospitalisation, and the word used is "entitled". Then section 3, which is the bar. No person shall be entitled to the treatment, admission or hospitalization referred to in sections one and two unless at the time of application they have actually resided within the commonwealth continuously for five years next preceding the date of the application. And the burden of proof of such residence shall be the responsibility of the veteran. Five continuous years immediately preceding is the strictest residency requirement for a state veterans' home anywhere in this catalog. Wisconsin requires none at all, Alaska one year, Kansas and Nebraska two. Massachusetts requires five and then puts the evidential burden on the applicant. There is a softening route and it is easy to miss because it sits in an administrative section rather than in section 3. Section 12(a)(iii)(B) empowers the Office of Veterans' Homes and Housing to make rules providing for treatment, admission and hospitalization for any person qualified under section 1, except for residence, if that person had at some time prior to their application resided in the commonwealth continuously for five years. So five continuous years at any point in a lifetime, rather than the five immediately preceding, can be enough if the regulations so provide. A veteran who grew up in Massachusetts, served, settled elsewhere and wants to come home should ask the Office about that provision by name rather than accepting a refusal under section 3. Section 2 is a curiosity worth flagging so a reader is not thrown by it. It defines "service referred to in section one" as service during eight named campaigns: Mexican Border Service in the Massachusetts National Guard 1916 to 1917, the Cuban Pacification Campaign 1906 to 1909, the Nicaraguan Campaign 1912 to 1929, the Vera Cruz Expedition 1914, the Dominican Campaigns 1916 to 1924, the Haitian Campaign 1914 to 1929, China Expeditionary Service 1929 to 1930, and the Army of Occupation in Germany 1918 to 1923. Section 1 no longer refers to service at all; it refers to being a veteran as defined in chapter 115. Section 2 is an orphaned definition attached to words that were replaced, and nobody alive is in a position to use it. It is not a restriction on section 1. Section 9 authorises domiciliary facilities for the admission of female veterans within the limitation of physical facilities, subject to the same federal and state requirements as other applicants, and requires that domiciliary services provided be identical and equal to those provided male veterans. The section reads as what it is, a mid-century addition, and the equality language is the operative part. The governance rebuild. Chapter 144 of the Acts of 2022 followed the COVID-19 outbreak at the Holyoke home and rewrote how the homes are run. It repealed sections 5 and 11, created the Office of Veterans' Homes and Housing under section 12 within the Executive Office of Veterans Services, headed by an executive director who must have at least five years of health care management experience and military or veteran-related experience, and gave that office the duties of overseeing implementation of the laws governing the homes, establishing standardised rules on outpatient treatment, admission and hospitalization, developing consistent by-laws covering admissions eligibility, procurement, per diem rates and staffing levels, and running a system for reviewing charges, complaints and comments. Section 15 created ombudspersons and prohibited retaliation against them. Section 16 requires participation in Medicare and Medicaid and adherence to trauma-informed care guidelines. Section 17 requires annual review of health record systems. Two boundaries on the executive director's power are written into section 12 and are worth knowing if a family is escalating a complaint: the director has access to all property under the Executive Office's oversight, but has no control over the day-to-day operations of the homes, and the trustees of each home and the veterans' homes council are not subject to the director's control. Section 12 also preserves grounds for exclusion that read as archaic and are still law: exclusion, temporarily or permanently, of a person who received a disciplinary discharge from a state home or from a VA facility; and exclusion of a person whose disability or illness may be diagnosed as neuropsychiatric, neurosurgical or tubercular, or another condition for which proper facilities are not available at the homes. That last one is how a home may lawfully decline a veteran whose primary need is psychiatric. Accountability. Section 12(b) requires an annual report by November 1 to the Governor, the legislative clerks and the joint committee on veterans and federal affairs, covering quality of care, financial status, uniformity of programmes, capital needs and the status of VA accreditation at each home. A family considering a placement should read the most recent one.