If you’re a primary care provider looking for something a little different than the typical clinical settings, Home Based Primary Care (HBPC) may be just what you’re looking for.
Home Based Primary Care is a unique VA program that provides comprehensive, interdisciplinary primary care in the homes of Veterans. The program is for Veterans who need team-based in-home support for ongoing diseases and illnesses that affect their health and daily activities.
Veterans who receive HBPC usually have difficulty making and keeping clinic visits because of the severity of their illness. Many are homebound, but the program is also for Veterans who are isolated, or when their caregivers are experiencing burdens.
Whatever their needs, your training and expertise will help them get better in familiar and comfortable surroundings.
Care in the comfort of home
HBPC plans involve Veterans working with health care professionals to organize comprehensive care in pursuit of lifelong health and wellness. Accomplishing this requires a team of experienced health care professionals, which offers many primary care career opportunities.
- Physicians: As a HBPC physician, you would supervise the health care team that provides the services. Often, you would be the first to make a home-based visit to a new patient. After this, you would then build a team suited to the Veteran’s health care needs, whether those are physical, mental, or some combination thereof.
- Registered nurses (RN): Functioning as a care manager, you’ll assess patient needs and those of their caregivers. You’ll deliver nursing care in the home, and delegate and oversee the care delivered by licensed practical nurses (LPNs), also on the HBPC team.
- Occupational therapists (OT): You’ll conduct in-home rehabilitative, as well as functional and environmental safety assessments. As with any OT program, your work focuses on helping a Veteran perform activities and roles that are most important to their daily lives.
- Physical therapists (PT): You would provide direct service to Veterans with regard to establishing physical limitations and overcoming handicaps. Like an OT, you can conduct in-home safety assessments, but instead of focusing on daily functions, you help Veterans cope with pain, increase range of motion, and improve endurance.
- Psychologists: As the primary mental health provider of the HBPC team, you’ll provide mental health assessment, treatment, management, and professional consultation services. You’ll also assist the families of Veterans, particularly when such care is related to the Veteran’s overall treatment plan and allows the family to sustain the patient in the home environment.
- Social workers: You can help identify a Veteran’s problems, strengths, needs, abilities, preferences, weaknesses and coping skills. In collaboration with the family, caregivers and their colleagues on the HBPC team, you’ll use your expertise to help design a treatment plan that works for the Veteran in need.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If a Veteran needs some other kind of specialty care, clinicians and experts can be added to the team, much like how Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACTs) at VA facilities operate.
Because I CARE
At VA, our core values—integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect, and excellence—define who we are as VA employees and how we will fulfill our mission to care for Veterans, whether that’s in one of our facilities or in the homes of our Veterans.
We feel these 5 ideals describe our culture and serve as the foundation for the way we interact with our Veterans and our fellow employees no matter where the job takes us.
- Integrity: We choose to act with the highest professional standards and maintain the trust of all with whom we engage.
- Commitment: We work diligently to serve Veterans, and are driven by an earnest belief in VA’s mission.
- Advocacy: We are truly Veteran-centric, as we work to identify, consider, and advance the interests of Veterans.
- Respect: We treat all those we serve and with whom we work with dignity and respect, because we believe you must show respect to earn it.
- Excellence: We strive for the highest quality and value continuous improvement.
Work at VA
Broaden your primary care career horizons by helping us help Veterans stay comfortable in their homes.
- LEARN more about Home Based Primary Care.
- READ more about our commitment to Veterans.
- EXPLORE a career with VA.
