Holyoke Soldiers' Home

A congressional committee examining oversight of state veterans’ homes during the pandemic heard today from a former superintendent of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home—site of one of the deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country.

Western Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal has announced $8.7 million in federal funding for Holyoke Medical Center. The Democratic Chair of the influential House Ways and Means Committee visited the hospital Saturday morning to announce the funding that comes from the Department of Health and Human Services COVID Fund.

      The attorney for suspended Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh Thursday asserted he is being wrongly blamed for the deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the state-run long term care facility.

      A lawsuit has been filed over the deadly coronavirus outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers’ home.

A campaign has been launched to persuade Massachusetts state officials to fund major upgrades to the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where 76 residents have died from COVID-19

Over the past several weeks, as coronavirus deaths in the United States neared 100,000, the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home has been decimated by COVID-19. With scores of its residents killed by the virus, it is now being investigated by the governor, state attorney general, state inspector general, and U.S. Attorney.

Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump says an audit of the Department of Early Education and Care found a number of shortcomings in the agency — from inconsistent investigation and reporting of child abuse to a failure to properly conduct background checks on its staff. Bump’s audit – which ran from 2016 to 2018 – has produced a number of recommendations to the EEC. WAMC spoke with Bump about her investigation, as well as her department’s past examinations of the soldiers’ homes in Chelsea and Holyoke. The horror has garnered national headlines, with more than 100 coronavirus-related deaths at the state-run nursing facilities for veterans in Massachusetts since March. Bump says audits in 2016 and 2017 indicated issues with the facilities years before the pandemic.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division have announced an investigation into the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke following the deaths of more than 30 residents from COVID-19. WAMC spoke with U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling Friday about what the investigation will entail, and how it will complement two parallel investigations announced by Governor Charlie Baker and state Attorney General Maura Healey.

  Top state and local officials were apparently kept in the dark as the coronavirus spread with deadly consequences through the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home in western Massachusetts.

     Eleven residents of the state-owned Holyoke Soldiers’ Home have died amid an outbreak of Covid-19 at the long-term care facility for veterans in western Massachusetts.

The head of the Massachusetts Department of Veterans’ Services was confronted at a meeting today by residents of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, family members, and veterans’ advocates over staffing levels and state financial support for the long-term care facility, which is undergoing a management shakeup.