Rehabs That Take Suncoast PACE

What Is Suncoast PACE?

A Florida organization running the federal PACE model, which combines a health plan and a care provider in one body. It receives a set monthly payment for each participant from Medicare and from Florida Medicaid, then arranges the whole of that person’s medical, drug and long-term care, including anything behavioral its clinical team writes into the care plan.

What that buys a participant is coordination rather than a benefit list. Federal rules strip out the usual ceilings on how much, how long or how broad a service can be, and replace them with a single plan of care that a clinical team keeps under review. The team must reassess a participant at least every six months, and the initial assessment has to cover physical and cognitive function, psychosocial status and conduct, which is often where a drinking or drug problem is first written down.

Who Oversees It in Florida

Two state bodies share the job. Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration oversees the PACE program itself, while the Department of Elder Affairs makes the level-of-care determination that decides whether an applicant qualifies at all. The agency takes PACE questions by email at FLMedicaid_PACE@ahca.myflorida.com, and federal oversight runs through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

How the Model Pays for Itself

Capitation, at full risk. A fixed per-member monthly sum arrives from Medicare Parts A, B and D and from the state, and the organization absorbs the difference if a participant’s year costs more than that. Nationally, combined federal and state Medicaid spending on PACE came to $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2023.

Which Counties Does Suncoast PACE Cover?

The July 2026 state report records Suncoast’s enrollment in Pinellas County, with 271 participants. Statewide, Florida PACE organizations between them reach 24 counties and 4,152 enrolled participants, from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach in the south through Lee, Hillsborough and Orange to Duval in the northeast.

Those boundaries are published and enforced, and a service area can be drawn by county or by individual ZIP code depending on the state. That is why a referral sometimes goes nowhere: an applicant who sits just outside the line is not a candidate for this organization, however close the state licensed treatment program they want to attend happens to be. Florida’s lineup has also grown and shifted over recent years, so a boundary checked two years ago is worth checking again.

Who Qualifies for Suncoast PACE?

An applicant has to be at least 55, live inside the service area, hold a state certification of nursing-home level of care, and be able to remain at home safely with the program’s support. The national association states that no income or asset test is applied and that neither Medicare nor Medicaid enrollment is a precondition.

Does Suncoast PACE Cover Drug and Alcohol Rehab?

Yes, though not under that heading. Substance use treatment is nowhere named as a distinct PACE benefit. It arrives through the rule that the benefit package must carry everything Medicare covers, everything Florida’s Medicaid plan covers, and any further service the clinical team judges necessary to improve or maintain a participant’s health.

So the practical test has two halves. Does Medicare or Florida Medicaid pay for this level of care anywhere, and has the team written it into this participant’s plan? A decision either way has to rest on the person’s medical, physical, emotional and social needs together with current clinical practice guidelines for the service in question. Timeliness is also regulated: medications go out within 24 hours and other cleared services have to be arranged within seven calendar days, with care reachable around the clock.

Withdrawal Management and Hospital Admission

Hospital treatment is part of the package, and Medicare pays for inpatient care in a general or psychiatric hospital, so an admission for supervised withdrawal on a hospital unit has a route through. A stand-alone residential stay is harder to place, since Medicare does not list residential rehab among its mental health and substance use services at all.

Day Treatment and Therapy

Medicare pays for outpatient substance use treatment, intensive outpatient care and a partial hospitalization program at hospitals, community mental health centers, Federally Qualified Health Centers, rural health clinics and opioid treatment programs. Counseling sits inside PACE as well, with mental health counseling on the federal service list and psychiatry held under contract by every organization.

Prescribed Medication

Drug coverage is delivered by the organization itself, not by an outside drug plan, and nothing is charged for a medication the team has cleared. Federal guidance names buprenorphine, buprenorphine with naloxone, naltrexone and methadone as the licensed options for opioid dependence, so buprenorphine treatment falls inside what Medicare, and therefore PACE, reaches.

Does Suncoast PACE Cover Treatment Outside Its Network?

No, other than in an emergency. Participants use the organization’s own staff and its contracted clinicians for health services, and marketing material has to warn that someone may be fully and personally liable for unauthorized or out-of-network costs. Urgent care away from home is paid where it was cleared first or staff could not be reached.

What Does Suncoast PACE Cost in Florida?

A participant pays no copay, no coinsurance and no deductible for anything the clinical team authorizes, prescriptions included. Anyone holding Medicaid also pays no monthly premium toward the long-term care side. A charge only arises for somebody who has Medicare on its own, or who has neither program and arranges to pay privately.

Where that premium applies, it is calculated as the state’s Medicaid capitation amount plus the Medicare drug premium, and federal analysts found capitation running between about $2,800 and $7,700 for each member each month in the states they examined. It is a real monthly figure, not a token one, and it is the single number a Medicare-only applicant should ask for in writing before enrolling. Dual coverage is the usual position: four in five participants nationally held both programs in 2023.

The table shows what treatment bills without any coverage attached, and nationally the middle half of day-treatment prices falls between $7,000 and $15,000 a month while the intensive outpatient level falls between $2,500 and $10,000. None of it should reach an enrolled participant for authorized care. It becomes relevant only where a family looks at treatment the team has declined to authorize, in which case payment assistance at the program itself is the next question to ask.

Is Suncoast PACE the Same as Florida PACE?

No. Florida PACE is a separate organization in the same state report, with its enrollment recorded in Miami-Dade and Broward rather than Pinellas. The two names sit side by side on the state’s list, hold their own contracts and keep their own clinical staff, so neither one can authorize care for the other’s participants.

The same caution applies right across the state list. Hope PACE, MorseLife PACE, PACE Partners of NE FL, Empath, Stratum, Trinity, Mt. Sinai and Broward PACE Program, LLC each appear with their own counties, and InnovAge turns up as a multi-area operator covering two separate Florida service areas at once. Outside Florida the pattern repeats, which is why a page such as PACE of the Southern Piedmont describes a wholly different operation in North Carolina. Nothing about a shared acronym implies a shared network, and the National PACE Association is a trade body rather than an operator.

How Do I Find a Rehab That Takes Suncoast PACE?

Begin with the participant’s own clinical team, since it holds the contracted list and signs off the admission. Florida’s state agency answers PACE questions by email, the national association publishes a program finder arranged by state, and Medicare takes calls on 1-800-633-4227 with TTY on 1-877-486-2048 at any hour of the day.

Programs that accept this coverage are gathered on the PACE page, with related pages covering dual diagnosis treatment under Medicare and Medicare telehealth, which is worth asking about where travel is hard. Each listing shows the levels of care offered, the payments the program says it accepts, licensing and accreditation shown where The Joint Commission or CARF lists the facility, and how far the site sits from the nearest airport. Those entries draw on government treatment registers, state licensing records, accreditor listings, and details supplied by the providers themselves.

References and Citations

• Florida Agency for Health Care Administration — July 2026 report on the state’s PACE organizations, including the organizations named, their service area counties and enrolled participant counts, with the Department of Elder Affairs role in level-of-care determination.
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — federal PACE regulations and guidance on the benefit package, assessment and reassessment, the basis for team decisions, service and medication timeliness, network and liability warnings, disenrollment protections and the medications named for opioid dependence.
• Medicare.gov and Medicaid.gov — PACE eligibility conditions, listed services including mental health counseling, drug coverage inside PACE, premium rules for Medicare-only participants, and the Medicare helpline and TTY numbers.
• Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission — the capitated payment model, state Medicaid capitation ranges, the dual eligibility share of participants and fiscal year 2023 Medicaid spending on PACE.
• RehabSeekers directory listings and market rate research, United States, 2026. Ranges are indicative and vary by facility, length of stay and coverage.