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June 22, 2010

VA Montana Healthcare System and Billings Clinic Partner To Provide Program of All-inclusive Care for Elderly (PACE) to Veterans

Billings, MT — Starting July 1, 2010, Billings Clinic and VA Montana Healthcare System (VAMTHCS) will partner to offer Veterans the option to participate in the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) with centers in Billings and Livingston, Montana. PACE is an innovative, team approach offered to an aging family member to remain at home by providing an alternative to nursing home care.

As a rural state, Montana has a high proportion of Veterans being served in nursing homes due to a lack of home and community-based care and caregiver support available in the Veteran’s community of residence. Currently, there are 306 Veterans age 55 years and older living in Park County — Livingston and 2,647 Veterans 55 years and older living in Yellowstone county — Billings. At this time, home health care is the only home and community-based service available. PACE service makes patient centered, comprehensive community-based services available to eligible Montana Veterans and allow them a means to remain living safely and successfully in their community.

By adding PACE as a VA service, Veterans will benefit from goals of the program which include:

  • Prevent premature institutionalization by providing the community care and services to aid Veterans to remain living in their home and communities
  • Expand home and community-based services to areas that do not currently have these services
  • Provide home and community-based services to Veterans who do not qualify for Medicaid
  • Provides home and community based care to Veterans living in rural Montana

PACE serves individuals who are age 55 or older, certified by the state to need nursing home care, are able to live safely in the community at the time of enrollment and live in a PACE service area. PACE provides preventive health care; primary and specialty medical care; medications, supplies and home medical equipment; dental, eye and foot care; rehabilitation and recreational therapies; personal care; nursing supervision and transportation assistance.

The PACE model offers:

  • Lifetime services to the elderly as an alternative to nursing home care
  • Support of ongoing community residence with continued community participation
  • Coordination and provision of all needed medical, social and supportive services
  • Service integration through interdisciplinary team care planning with most services provided directly

Billings Clinic was selected by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop one of the first fourteen rural PACE programs in the nation. This resulted in the selection of Livingston as the rural PACE site and the creation of an integrated urban-rural partnership that will use a “hub-and-spoke” model, providing Livingston with a unique and independently functioning PACE center, supported and administered by the urban center in Billings. Billings Clinic opened the Billings and Livingston PACE sites in October, 2008

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