The Acute Hospital Care at Home program, launched by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the COVID-19 pandemic to free hospital beds for COVID and other sick patients, is showing promise as an alternative to hospital care for at least some patients.
In an analysis of more than 5000 Medicare patients participating in the Acute Hospital Care at Home program from mid-2022 through mid-2023, only 0.5 percent of participants passed away while being served by the program at home and only 6.2 percent required a return to a hospital for more than 24 hours.
With the waiver enacted to establish this program expiring at the end of 2024, policymakers will need to consider whether the Acute Hospital Care at Home program should be extended and whether it is worth studying more closely than this limited review.
Learn more from the Healthcare Dive article “Mortality rates low for hospital-at-home patients” and from the Annals of Internal Medicine letter “Acute Hospital Care at Home in the United States: The Early National Experience.”