Celebrating 90 Years of Service

This year, 2024, marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Visiting Nurse Association of Texas (VNA). A small group of volunteer nurses, led by Lillian Beckett, a public school nurse, went into the poorest sections of Dallas and the surrounding area to provide desperately needed care to the sick, infirm, and new mothers and their babies during the Great Depression.

Realizing the critical need for this care was far greater than what these few volunteer nurses could provide, 12 prominent Dallas women and 13 public nurses met on April 6, 1934, to organize the nonprofit organization we have today: the Visiting Nurse Association. The official announcement of the new organization was made on May 12, the birth date of Florence Nightingale.

In 1973, The Women’s Council of Dallas transferred operational management of Meals on Wheels in Dallas to VNA. What began with 125 meals then, has blossomed into more than 4,800 meals every weekday.

VNA participated in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pilot program that helped establish the Medicare hospice benefit still available today. As a result of this project, VNA became Texas’ first nonprofit hospice provider in 1978 and officially became a Medicare Hospice provider in 1983.

With our expert knowledge and superior care, VNA began receiving numerous requests for care outside Dallas County. Answering the call, branch offices were established in Kaufman County in 1974, in McKinney in 1979, and Fort Worth in 1981. Later, VNA expanded further north into Denton County in 1995.

Remaining true to our heritage, VNA went where we were needed most during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s to care for patients suffering from HIV/AIDS. With funding from the Ryan White grant, VNA established an AIDS Team of nurses to care for these patients.

VNA was selected to participate in an Innovation Model program through The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) known as the Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM) in 2014. The pilot, designed to test the effectiveness and efficiency of homebased supportive palliative care, officially launched in 2018. Patient outcomes and health care savings proved to be successful for VNA as well as nationally. Our VNA Care Choices program continues to this day, offering in-home support for those suffering from serious illness.

True to our history of providing unmatched clinical care serving those with the greatest need, in collaboration with area children’s hospitals, VNA launched the Children’s Haven pediatric hospice program in 2021. As one of only two pediatric hospice providers in the region, VNA continues to expand to meet the needs of this vulnerable population in North Texas.