Medicare’s Acute Hospital Care at Home program is in limbo after the law authorizing it lapsed at the end of the 2025 federal fiscal year on September 30.
As a result of this loss of authorization, CMS directed the more than 300 hospitals that participate in the program and care for seriously ill patients in their homes to discharge current participants or bring them back into their hospital.
The program, created during the COVID-19 pandemic to free hospital beds for sicker patients who also were highly contagious, has been credited with lower mortality rates, reduced crowding in hospital emergency rooms, and continuing to free hospital beds in communities where many hospitals operate near capacity – a particular concern now as the flu season approaches.
But for now, the program’s future is in limbo. While there appears to be broad bipartisan support for its reauthorization it is not clear whether, amid the current federal government shutdown, that reauthorization will come through a new continuing resolution to fund the federal government, as part of a new federal budget, or through other legislation – or when that might be. In the meantime, the hospitals that have participated in the program must wait and see and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has advised hospitals that are interested in the program that it is not authorizing additional participants.
Learn more about Medicare’s Acute Hospital Care at Home program and its current status from the Politico article “Hospital-at-home program collateral damage of the shutdown.”