The Soldiers' Home in Holyoke provides personal health care and supportive services to honorably discharged Massachusetts veterans with non-service-related health problems who live in the four westernmost counties of the Commonwealth. Veterans with intensive medical needs occupy the Home's 220 long-term care beds. Each day, twenty long-term care patients with Alzheimer's Disease and other brain disorders participate in therapeutic activities in the Home's elder day care program, which is run primarily by volunteers. The program activities, designed to stimulate sensory skills, include music, cooking, pet, and plant therapy. Specialty outpatient clinics handle more than 10,000 visits each year. A dormitory unit provides housing and supportive services to an additional twenty veterans each year. Social work and supportive care services are also available to Home residents and other eligible veterans.

Objectives

Through expansion funding, the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke will pursue two initiatives aimed at reducing the waiting list for services:

• open a new long-term care unit to serve seventeen medically-needy veterans; and
• open the recently renovated Nurses Quarters building as a domicilary, which will accommodate twenty-one veterans currently residing in the Main Building plus eight additional veterans currently on the waiting list.

Budget Recommendations

The Fiscal Year 1998 recommendation includes $265,384 to fund the ten additional full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) necessary for the expansion in long-term care beds. An additional expansion of $85,500 will fund the four FTEs necessary to staff the new domicilary. This funding will allow services to begin in the second quarter of Fiscal Year 1998. Both expansion initiatives will generate new revenue through increased reimbursement from direct payments and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

Budgetary Direct Appropriations

SOLDIERS' HOME IN HOLYOKE
4190-0100	For the maintenance of the soldiers' home in Holyoke	13,089,440

HOLYOKE SOLDIERS' HOME ADULT DAY CARE PROGRAM
4190-0101	For the maintenance of adult day care services at the soldiers' home in Holyoke	137,345

Budgetary Retained Revenues

HOLYOKE SOLDIERS' HOME LICENSE PLATE FEES RETAINED REVENUE
4190-1100	The soldiers' home in Holyoke may expend revenues in an amount not to exceed eighty-eight thousand dollars for facility maintenance and patient care; provided, that forty percent of all revenues generated pursuant to section two of chapter ninety of the General Laws, through the purchase of license plates with the designation VETERAN by eligible veterans of the commonwealth, upon compensating the registry of motor vehicles for the costs associated with said license plates, shall be deposited into and for the purposes of this account	88,000