A new study suggests that hospital at home programs are producing positive results for patients and the health care system.
Positive results such as greater comfort for patients, fewer returns to the hospital emergency department within 30 days of discharge, lower in-hospital mortality, reduced costs, and improved outcomes.
Serving patients at home also frees hospital beds for sicker patients – an important consideration in communities where hospital occupancy levels are especially high.
In hospital at home programs, patients receive acute-care services in their own homes with the help of remote monitoring and home visits by clinicians.
One downside so far: such programs are relatively rare in rural areas.
Earlier this year, Congress extended the temporary authorization under which hospital at home programs were operating through 2030. The program emerged in a serious way during the COVID-19 pandemic as an alternative to bringing sick patients to hospitals that had large numbers of highly contagious COVID patients and small numbers of available beds.
More than 330 hospitals in 37 states have such programs. They primarily serve Medicare beneficiaries, although in some cases, some Medicaid and commercial patients now participate as well.
Learn more about these preliminary findings about the value of hospital at home programs from the JAMA Network Open report “Outcomes Associated With Hospital at Home vs Traditional Inpatient Stay” and the Healthcare Dive article “Hospital at home linked to lower ED visits, in-hospital mortality: study.”