PACE Providers Continue to Expand in L.A.

PACE providers are expanding in Los Angeles, and it is helping to drive medical office leasing activity. WelbeHealth has signed a new lease at with Meridian at Cotton Medical Center, an 115,000-square-foot property adjacent to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, to expand its current services. The lease is part of an ongoing expansion for the provider, which has applied to be a PACE provider for Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank.

“We are very excited to partner with a healthcare provider specializing in PACE. Part of our mission and vision at Meridian is to provide greater access to care at a more affordable cost, and the PACE program aims to do exactly that,” Mike Conn, SVP at Meridian, tells GlobeSt.com. “PACE provides seniors with a more affordable care option than a skilled nursing facility and allows them to remain independent at home while taking care of their basic needs in a lower acuity setting during the day. The shift to move care to more affordable out-patient settings is here to stay, and we want to be a big part of that moving forward.”

The tenant was a great fit for Meridian, which aims to provide patient oriented healthcare to a range of providers. “This project embodies what Meridian is working to achieve in the healthcare real estate space,” John Pollock, CEO of Meridian, tells GlobeSt.com. “The PACE program has been around for over 40-years. It provides better quality care and better outcomes at a lower cost than traditional nursing home care.” The 14,000-square-foot lease is the largest at Cotton Medical Center and brings the property to 83% occupancy.

PACE has been rapidly growing for the last few years, although the program is decades old. “The origins of PACE can be traced to our own backyard here in the Bay Area,” says Pollock. “In 1971 a group of community members concerned about the care for older adults in their neighborhoods of San Francisco’s Chinatown, North Beach and Polk Gulch created ‘On Lok’ to care for them. Now it is a certified Medicare program that has spread to 30 states. Enrollment in California PACE doubled from 2010 to 2015 and is expected to continue to grow as the elderly population rapidly increases. In 2015, Congress passed the PACE Innovation Act to encourage Medicare to allow providers to develop pilot programs in an effort to meet the increasing need for elderly care.”

The act spurred PACE program participation, and since, the healthcare industry has seen a significant expansion of PACE providers. “Private, for-profit companies are now allowed to participate in the PACE program,” says Pollock. “WelbeHealth answered the calling and has assembled an industry-leading team of care providers that are blazing a trail to expand access to the PACE.”