VectorCare Launches PACE App on Epic App Showroom

PACE programs run on coordination. The model itself, adult day health, home care, meals, transportation wrapped together, only works if every piece moves in sync. I built the VectorCare PACE app because I watched that coordination fail in real time.

A few years ago, I visited a PACE program in the Midwest. The coordinator spent her entire morning on the phone. She was calling drivers for recurring Monday appointments. She was texting a nurse about Friday's medical trip. She was hunting through spreadsheets to figure out if the van could fit one more person on Thursday's batch route. She wasn't managing PACE. She was managing logistics like it was 1995.

That's when it hit me: PACE coordinators don't need another vendor. They need transportation baked into the system they're already using.

Today, we're announcing the VectorCare PACE app on the Epic App Showroom. 202 PACE programs across 33 states serve 92,000 participants. Many of them live inside Epic every single day. The app lives there too.

What Changed for Coordinators

Here's what changed. A coordinator used to toggle between Epic and a ride-request system. Now she submits a transportation order from the participant's chart. That order gets routed to the network. Real drivers see real availability. She gets confirmation back inside Epic. No tab-switching. No phone calls. No spreadsheets.

The app handles the PACE workflows nobody else understood. Recurring rides get scheduled with two clicks. A participant who attends Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays? The system learns it. You request transportation once per week and the app handles the pattern. Batch scheduling means the dispatcher knows that eight participants need pickup from the same assisted living facility at 8 AM. The app chains those pickups into a single efficient route, not eight separate trips.

Built on SMART on FHIR

We built this on SMART on FHIR, the standard that lets apps talk to Epic without reinventing the wheel. When you dispatch a ride from the app, the system knows the participant's address because it's in Epic. It knows their mobility restrictions. It knows if they're a no-show risk. The infrastructure is already there. We're just opening the door.

A Day Before vs. After

Before the app, a day in a PACE program looked like this: 7 AM coordinator arrives, opens three separate systems, calls five drivers to confirm yesterday's trips, spends an hour building today's manifest by hand, discovers two participants need unexpected medical rides, makes more calls, approves overtime because yesterday's batch ran long, finds out a driver called in sick, starts rerouting, gets interrupted by a nurse with an urgent medical transport need, doesn't eat lunch, stays until 6 PM updating spreadsheets.

After the app: The coordinator arrives, everything is visible in Epic. She submits ride requests for medical appointments directly from participant charts. The system shows her available capacity in real time. She can see her entire fleet, medical, batch, and scheduled, in one view. Drivers get their manifest automatically. If something changes, the app recalculates. She actually has time to think about program quality instead of just moving people around.

Why the Epic App Showroom Matters

Why does Epic App Showroom matter? It's not just distribution. It's validation. Epic customers are already paying for Epic. They want to extend it, not replace it. The Showroom is how that happens. Apps in the Showroom follow Epic's standards. They integrate at the data layer. They're not bolted on top. They're part of the infrastructure.

The Bigger Picture

This is what we mean by solving transportation at the system level. PACE was the obvious first place to prove it. The programs are concentrated. The workflow is clear. The pain is specific. But the bigger picture is this: health systems are built on layers. You've got the EHR as the foundation. Clinical apps sit on top. Operational apps. Financial systems. And underneath, you need reliable plumbing for moving people. Transportation is plumbing. It shouldn't be manual. It shouldn't require five vendor integrations.

The PACE app is one layer of a larger network. On one side, it connects to Epic, where health data lives. On the other side, it connects to real drivers, real vehicles, real geography. That connection is what most health systems don't have. We do.

For providers already on VectorCare, the PACE app means expanding their ride network into new program types. For PACE programs choosing between custom-built logistics and turnkey solutions, it means staying in Epic and letting the network handle the hard part.

We launched with five PACE programs already running live. They've moved 3,200 rides through the app in the first month. That's not a pilot. That's production.