Vermont Veterans' Home

The Vermont Veterans' Home in Bennington is a body corporate and politic and a public instrumentality of the State, governed by a 21-member Board of Trustees of whom at least 15 must be honorably discharged veterans and one must be a classified employee of the Home elected by secret ballot of the Home's classified employees. Admission eligibility is set by the Board rather than by statute. The Home states that eligible veterans are those who served at least ninety days in the Armed Forces of the United States and were discharged under honorable conditions, with the 90 days waived where the discharge was for a disability incurred in the line of duty. Gold Star parents and spouses of qualified veterans are also eligible for admission. Residency is a priority, not a requirement. The Home says Vermont veterans receive priority for admission and that veterans from other states are welcome to apply. A veteran turned away elsewhere for residency should read that sentence carefully. Care at the Home covers short and long-term skilled nursing, post-operative wound care, physical, speech, rehabilitation, and occupational therapies, a certified Alzheimer's and dementia unit, medical social work, respite care, dietary services, podiatry, dental services, palliative care, transportation, and a family guest room. Respite care is the one families most often do not know to ask about. The most significant recent change is not about the building. 2023 Act 147 (Adj. Sess.), section 1, effective July 1, 2024, added four powers to 20 V.S.A. 1714. The Board may now provide or coordinate services and supports in a home or community setting other than a nursing home to Vermont veterans who do not reside in the Home; provide or coordinate housing for Vermont veterans who do not reside in the Home; contract or partner with public and private entities to do so; and establish a second nursing home in Vermont to serve veterans who do not reside at the Home. The Home's authority to contract for professional services was extended at the same time to cover care for veterans who do not reside there. That turns a single nursing home in the state's southwest corner into a statewide service authority, on paper. What has actually been stood up under those powers is a question for the Home, and a veteran in the Northeast Kingdom looking for community care should ask what exists now rather than assume the statute has been built out. Section 1717(b)(2), amended by the same act, lets the Home hold up to $10,000.00 of donations and endowments locally and spend them on residents or on care and services for Vermont veterans who do not reside in the Home. Charges for residential room and board are set by written procedure of the Board under section 1714(3). The Home contracts with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs for services under section 1714(7), which is how the federal state home per diem reaches it. Section 1714(12) also allows the Board to admit non-veteran residents where doing so does not interfere with its core mission of caring for veterans and does not preclude federal funding. No disability rating gates admission. A rating can change what VA pays toward the cost, which is a separate question to put to the Home's admissions department.