Nevada Veterans Homes

Nevada operates state veterans homes under NRS 417.145 to 417.149, and the thing to know before planning around one is that the price is set annually by a board rather than fixed by statute. The rate-setting mechanism, NRS 417.147, subsection 2: "With the advice of the Nevada Veterans Services Commission, the Director shall, on or before April 1 of each calendar year, recommend to the State Board of Examiners a schedule of rates to be charged for occupancy of rooms at each veterans' home in this State during the following fiscal year. The State Board of Examiners shall establish the schedule of rates. In setting the rates, the State Board of Examiners shall consider the recommendations of the Director, but is not bound to follow the recommendations of the Director." Three points. The rate is per home, so the southern and northern homes can differ. It changes every fiscal year on a decision taken in the spring. And the body that decides is the State Board of Examiners, which is the Governor, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General sitting in that capacity, not the veterans department. A veteran or family asking what a room costs is asking an administrative question with an annual answer, and no statute supplies a figure. Administration, subsection 1. Subject to the limits in NRS 417.090, the Director shall appoint an administrator for each veterans' home, and "each administrator must be licensed as a nursing facility administrator or health services executive pursuant to NRS 654.170". That licensing requirement is a real quality guarantee written into the veterans chapter rather than left to the health licensing chapter alone. The Director must also take the other actions necessary for establishment, management, maintenance and operation, including establishing and implementing rules, policies and procedures, and must apply for federal grants and other available money, with a federal grant used only as the grant's terms permit. So the admission criteria, like the rates, live in departmental rules, policies and procedures under subsection 1(b) rather than in the statute. NRS 417.147 states no service test, no discharge test, no disability test and no minimum Nevada residency for admission to a home. Whatever a veteran is told about eligibility comes from policy, and policy can change without legislation. Confirm it with the home rather than from a published summary. Adult day health care, subsection 3: "To the extent that federal funding is available, the Director may establish and operate programs to provide adult day health care, as defined in 38 C.F.R. § 51.2, to veterans." That is a non-residential option worth asking about for a veteran who does not need or want to move in, and it is expressly contingent on federal money. The money, NRS 417.145. The Veterans Home Account is established in the State General Fund. Money received from payments made by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs for veterans who receive care in a veterans' home, and from other sources the section lists, goes into it. The section also establishes the Gift Account for the Veterans Home in Southern Nevada and the Gift Account for the Veterans Home in Northern Nevada, and requires an annual report of expenditures made from those gift accounts. The gift accounts are the destination of the donated tax exemptions described in the exemption waiver entry: a veteran who pays the property tax or the vehicle governmental services tax instead of claiming the exemption can direct the money to either home, subject to a combined ceiling of $2,000,000 per gift account per fiscal year under NRS 361.0905 and NRS 371.1035. Because the gift accounts are separate from the operating account, a donation supplements the appropriation rather than displacing it, and the required annual report of gift account expenditures is the document that shows what donations actually bought. NRS 417.148 establishes a revolving account and NRS 417.149 a trust fund for the deposit of money belonging to residents of a veterans' home, with maintenance requirements. That last provision is the protection for a resident's own funds held by the home, and a family managing a resident's money should know it exists. The Nevada Veterans Services Commission, created under NRS 417.150 with a chair under NRS 417.160, meetings under NRS 417.170 and duties under NRS 417.190, is the body whose advice the Director must take before recommending rates. Its meetings are where a rate increase is discussed before the Board of Examiners sees it.