C-TAC Member Spotlight
Thomas Edes, MD, US Department of Veterans Affairs
VA Home-Based Primary Care
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Home-Based Primary Care (HBPC) began in 1972. HBPC is a unique home care program that provides comprehensive longitudinal primary care by an interdisciplinary team, in the homes of veterans with complex chronic disabling disease for whom routine clinic-based care is not effective. HBPC is a model of home care designed for persons with chronic disease that addresses medical, physical, social and behavioral conditions.
HBPC in Action: In coordination with volunteer families, the VA arranges residential homes for older veterans. The program is called Medical Foster Homes and each veteran, who is often frail and elderly and living with multiple chronic conditions, receives care from the HBPC team in the comfort of a caring family environment. In this segment that was featured in November on NBC’s Making a Difference, Dr. Peter Bolling describes the program as a “win for doctors, win for Medicare, and a win for folks like Isaac and Olga Graves”, who you can hear more about in the clip below:
The core HBPC interdisciplinary team members include physician, nurse, social worker, dietitian, mental health provider, rehabilitation therapist and pharmacist. Others are added or involved depending upon local factors and veteran needs. You can read more about this model and others here.
About Dr. Thomas Edes
Thomas E. Edes is the Director of Geriatrics and Extended Care Operations for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, D.C. As Director, he has national responsibility for the direction and operations of VA’s spectrum of services for aging and disabled Veterans. These include Community Living Centers, Community and State Nursing Home programs, geriatric clinics and units, dementia care programs, Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Centers, Home-Based Primary Care programs, collaboration with community home health agencies, Adult Day Health Care, Community Residential Care, Medical Foster Homes, and hospice and palliative care. Under his leadership since 2000, the number of Veterans receiving Home Based Primary Care has tripled, hospice and palliative care has become an established program in every VA medical center, and Medical Foster Home has grown from a pilot project in Little Rock to a national program in 40 states and expanding.
