State Veterans Home Adult Day Health Care Improvement Act of 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. ZELDIN. Mr. Speaker, I am very excited to be here because I know just how many disabled veterans in our country are on wait lists for adult day healthcare and now will be getting a service that is just so important and overdue.

I certainly want to thank Chairman Roe and his great staff, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, the ranking member and his team as well, everybody coming together working hard on behalf of our disabled veterans who need it most.

I rise in support of S. 324. It is the Senate companion to my bill, H.R. 1005, which is a bill to provide adult day healthcare and save State Veterans Homes for veterans who are 70 percent or more service- connected disabled. This bill is an extension to the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act of 2006, which currently provides no-cost nursing home care at any State Veterans Home to veterans who are 70 percent or more service-connected disabled.

Medical model adult day healthcare provides comprehensive medical nursing and personal care services combined with engaging social activities for physically or cognitively impaired adults. Medical model adult day healthcare offers a complete array of rehabilitative therapies, including physical, occupational, and speech therapies, hospice and palliative care, social work, spiritual, nutritional counseling, and therapeutic recreation.

The program is designed to promote socialization and stimulation and maximize the participant's independence, while enhancing their quality of life. The program is staffed by a great team of multidisciplinary healthcare professionals who evaluate each participant and customize an individualized plan of care specific to their health and social needs.

Adult day healthcare is an alternative care setting that can allow some veterans who require long-term care services to remain in their homes as opposed to being institutionalized in a nursing home. Such veterans typically require support from some, but not all, activities of assisted daily living--ADLs--such as bathing, dressing, or feeding.

In many cases, the spouse or their family member may provide the veteran with much of their care, but they require additional support for some of the veteran's ADLs. By filling these gaps, adult day healthcare can allow these veterans to remain in their homes and communities for additional months, or even years, and thereby lower the financial cost of caring for these heroes.

Adult day healthcare also provides family caregivers support and relief to meet their other professional and family obligations and provides a well-deserved respite while their loved ones are participating in the program.

In addition to thanking Chairman Roe for his leadership and support on this important issue, I also want to thank Senator Hatch for carrying this effort in the Senate, as well as Fred Sganga and the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook for their great efforts. That is a State Veterans Home located in the First Congressional District of New York, one of three places currently offering adult day healthcare.

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Mr. ZELDIN. Mr. Speaker, this is a piece of legislation that will provide a valuable and necessary service to our Nation's veterans, and I am urging my colleagues to support this commonsense, bipartisan legislation.

What goes on too often unnoticed in this House is the great staff that we have to help make these efforts possible. So, from the leadership team, I want to thank staff John Leganski and Kelly Dixon, and in my office, as legislative director, Kevin Dowling, and Matthew Scott.

Thank you again to the great House Veterans' Affairs Committee, and we will all greatly miss Chairman Roe as he departs. Hopefully, maybe we will get him to change his mind, but in the meantime, I will just say we enjoyed serving with him, and I hope that he won't go anywhere for a very long time. He is a great leader for our veterans as well as being our ranking member.

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