New veteran digs are among swankiest skilled nursing units you’ll find but they’re not cheap

This is the first in a series of three articles about the New Mexico Veterans Home. The second focuses on the history of the home, beginning in 1937 as Carrie Tingley Hospital for Crippled Children. All photos by Tom Sharpe. See Part Two

“Major” Ross Bailey smiled, crinkling his scarred brow, when I asked him about his new quarters at the New Mexico State Veterans Home. 

“I love it here. It’s a paradise,” said the 62-year-old Carlsbad native who has been at the home for a year and three months, and moved into his room in one of its six new buildings at the end of September. “I’ll take you inside and show you the size of my room. It’s a corner room. …  I don’t know anybody else who’s got these digs. I’ve been in other digs down in Las Cruces. Oh my gosh.”

Bailey began coming to the Truth or Consequences retirement home as a child to visit his grandfather. At 18, he enlisted in the Army. Six years later, he joined the Special Forces. During Operation Desert Storm, he said, he got a battlefield commission and subsequently was promoted to the rank of major which became his nickname.

He said he can’t talk about some of his missions in the Mideast where he was shot seven times and blown up twice, the last time by a rocket-propelled grenade that ripped up the upper left side of his face, blinded his left eye and severely damaged his left hand. He spent two and a half years in hospitals, underwent many surgeries and has been unable to work or keep a home since leaving the military in 2014. He said multiple concussions have left him with violent reactions and he could become dangerous without medication.

Now that its six residential buildings are complete, the Veterans Home is fully a skilled nursing facility. This is a higher level of care than assisted living. Residents get meals, rooms, laundry and houskeeping services, like in assisted living, but skilled nursing adds 24-hour medical care (staffed by nurses), specialized medical care (with physicians); therapy, medication management and help with daily tasks for those with severe health issues. It’s the only such facility in Sierra County, the only one for veterans in the state and one of the swankiest anywhere.

What sets it apart from most skilled nursing homes is that it aims for a home-like atmosphere. Each of the 12 private rooms have their own bathrooms plus an array of modern conveniences like walk-in showers and electronic lifts over beds and toilets. Residents can get together in a high-ceilinged living room or in the adjacent dining room that has a large table and breakfast bar. The open kitchen is staffed by professional cooks. Residents can eat when they choose and get some things, like eggs, cooked to order. Multiple kitchens, rather than a single cafeteria as in the old hospital building, has meant increasing the number of cooks from six to 21.

It isn’t cheap: $11,490.30 a month, or $383.01 a day. To put the increase in long-term nursing home rates in perspective, consider that when the Veterans Home opened in 1986, monthly charges ranged from $290 for the ambulatory to $600 for those needing the highest level of care. The Veterans Administration pays the entire bill for military veterans with 70 percent disability or more. It pays less of the bill for other veterans and their spouses, who must rely on other government programs, private insurance or their own savings.

The Veterans Home is one of Sierra County’s largest employers with 257 people working there — 137 staff members, 110 employees of contracted agencies like traveling nurse services and 10 professionals contracting directly with the home. The annual budget is $15.7 million — $10.8 million from the state and $4.9 million from the federal government. The six new buildings, begun in July 2022, cost $60 million — $40 million from a legislative appropriation and $20 million in bonds.

Currently, the home can house up to 131 people — 72 in its six new buildings and 59 in the Annex, opened in 2017. The home had 104 residents by late November — up from 54 in May 2023, before the six new buildings opened. It is expected to reach capacity by late 2025. The administrator said it already is near its maximum of 20 percent spouses. Alcohol is not allowed. Residents may smoke, but only outside in designated areas. Pets are allowed only if certified as service animals.

There are some complaints. Bailey said the food is “70 percent good,” but better than in other skilled nursing facilities. He said the home needs more nurses and nursing assistants who live here and should quit relying on traveling nurses who don’t stay long enough to learn what is needed. Bailey said he’d also like to see a full-time physical therapist, bus rides into town, an Olympic-size swimming pool (the two on the property no longer work) and a focus on physical fitness. He said he works out at the exercise room at the Annex. I encountered him as he pushed his wheelchair at a good clip around the driveway past the old hospital building, now largely vacant, and toward the entrance where the rock wall is being extended and new landscaping put in place.

John D. Smith, 71, said a metal post between the two double doors at the entrance of the new buildings make it awkward to maneuver through in his electric wheelchair. He said he thinks the only way to solve this is to replace the double doors with something that has no center post. The former Army staff sergeant, who spent his career working with missiles in Huntsville, Alabama, then at White Sands, has started showing movies from his own collection two nights a week in the Annex theater. Smith, whose family live in Las Cruces, praised the home as a good place for his wife and children to visit him.

Mary Lou Murphy, 79, echoed the same thought about visiting families. She said she and her husband, Edward Murphy, 77, an Air Force veteran, have no complaints about their new room, but that they also liked their previous room in the old hospital building. “It ’s fine — about the same in new place,” she said. “Nothing is new to me. Good food, but not much difference.”

The home’s public relations coordinator, Andrea Trujillo, said she hopes to get more locals involved with the home in the coming year. Public relations suffered during the COVID pandemic when 37 residents died from the disease. The former administrator was put on leave after an investigation into safety practices at the home, and eventually was replaced by Kenneth Shull, a retired brigadier general who previously ran a veterans retirement home in Amarillo. There have been no COVID deaths at the home since January 2021. One of my appointments at the home in November was cancelled because of a COVID case discovered the day before.

The state Art in Public Places law has resulted in $202,700 to be spent on art for the  six new residential buildings. A selection committee, made up of employees from the state departments of Health and General Services, has been told the interiors of the buildings already are fully decorated so they are looking for large sculptural pieces to put outside the new buildings.