Setting the pace

Here's an idea that makes a lot of sense: Instead of indiscriminately trundling the frail and ailing elderly off to facilities where they are cloistered from the community and often their families, figure a way to bring the care they need to them.

Starting this month, it's become more than an idea. PACE , or Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, has been incorporated at St. Francis Medical Center, the first hospital in New Jersey to do so.

"This program offers an alternative to nursing home placement," said Jill Viggiano, a registered nurse and executive director for the program under which PACE will be administered: LIFE, or Living Independently For Elders. It is expected that over five years, LIFE will care for up to 300 seniors from Mercer County and northern Burlington County who will receive comprehensive health care while remaining in the comfort of their home and community.

For more than a year, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-Hamilton, has been working with St. Francis to begin the new approach of assembling a team of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists and other health specialists to track an individual's health and coordinate treatment.

Patients will be brought into the center at St. Francis during the week for monitoring as well as meals and recreation. And members of the LIFE team will provide health care at the individual's home, including meals-to-go.

"Most seniors are obviously much happier in their own home than facing the prospects of going to a convalescent home," Smith said. "Staying at home can foster independence, greater freedoms, healthy activities and more privacy."

It seems to incorporate all the advantages of comprehensive health care with the reassurance of a house call.

It also seems to be a good model for a future in which the costs of long-term health care are expected to drag down the quality of life for nearly two-thirds of today's retirees. It can cost $77,000 a year for a nursing home room and $20,000 for in-home care, staggering expenses that most retirees will be unable to handle, according to a new report from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

The cost of health care will create such an unexpected hardship on unprepared retiring baby boomers that it's imperative to sound the warning now, said Alicia Munnell, center director, in an Associated Press report.

While the health-care reforms that President Barack Obama and his team are working on have not yet begun to percolate, innovate programs such as PACE that aim to keep older adults in the community by maintaining their independence are essential.

We're encouraged to see it beginning right here.