How transitioning care to the home enhances patient outcomes and long-term performance

The problems facing health systems have persisted over the past three years, continuing to shift perspectives on how to achieve optimal care delivery. Pandemic-related changes brought increased attention on telemedicine, health equity, and bringing patient care into the home. These continue to be top-of-mind strategies for healthcare leaders.

Organizations are prioritizing more sustainable, efficient, and patient-centered approaches to care delivery. Specifically, many are finding that remote care-at-home programs allow for proactive patient management of across the care continuum. These programs are beneficial not only for patients moving from the acute setting to post-acute care, but also for the chronically ill.

Evidence that care in the home is the future of healthcare

According to the American Journal of Nursing, a hospital-at-home program is safe, effective, and less expensive than inpatient care, allowing hospitals to reduce readmissions by 70%¹. Another study by the Annals of Internal Medicine showed a hospital at home program decreased the cost of acute care episodes by an average of 38%².

Caring for patients in the comfort of their home is not a new concept, but there is a rapidly growing trend among health systems to establish hospital-at-home programs. Hospitals adopting this new model of care have successfully improved patient satisfaction and overall health outcomes, while achieving much-needed operational efficiencies.

For instance, among veterans treated with remote care at home during the pandemic, there was a 94% patient satisfaction rate, according to a study by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Connected Care³. Additionally, telehealth offers the potential to expand patient access to care, bringing more in-home services such as nursing, phlebotomy and nutrition to a wider population.

For health systems themselves, another significant advantage of investing in hospital-at-home programs is reducing patient length of stay. Reduction in length of stay ultimately frees up more beds in the hospital for other patients with critical conditions.

Considerations for establishing a successful hospital-at-home program

Technology plays a crucial role in accelerating new innovations of care and ensuring the success of a hospital-at-home program. A well-designed platform should include disease-specific care pathways, provide personalized recommendations, and offer FDA-cleared algorithms and HIPAA compliance.

Clinical teams also require the ability to act quickly. Therefore, a hospital-at-home program should entail monitoring patients’ vitals with wearable devices. These real-time insights can support treatment decisions during in-home visits or telehealth interventions – in other words, helping the physician gain a clearer picture of a patient’s health status, while allowing for the patient to remain in the comfort of their own home.

Another hallmark of any successful hospital-at-home program is the ability “to actively and passively monitor the patient in order to identify many social determinants of health or barriers they may face inside their home,” said Dr. Tahir Haque, senior medical director at Biofourmis and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The right software can support care coordination by connecting licensed experts through telehealth, or by providing other necessary home visits and services in collaboration with the patient’s preferred physician. Leveraging existing staff will continue to be important as the 10-year demand for home health and personal care aides is expected to grow at 25%, year over year – significantly faster than average job growth⁴.

Adapting to better serve patients — and ensure long-term organizational success

To reduce the burdens impacting health systems today and bring more flexibility to the lives of patients and providers, industry leaders must embrace the benefits of remote patient management.

“Over the next decade, hospital at home will become part of our mainstream care as a delivery option for patients,” said Dr. Haque. “If you are a health system considering a hospital-at-home program, there will be some growing pains initially to overcome, but it will be well worth it – clinically and financially. If you are a clinician, please consider practicing in a care at home model if appropriate for your specialty – it will be one of the most rewarding things you do in your career.”

Footnotes

1. Levine DM, Ouchi K, Blanchfield B, Saenz A, Burke K, Paz M, Diamond K, Pu CT, Schnipper JL. Hospital-Level Care at Home for Acutely Ill Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Ann Intern Med. 2020 Jan 21;172(2):77-85. doi: 10.7326/M19-0600. Epub 2019 Dec 17. PMID: 31842232. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31842232/

2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Occupational outlook handbook: Home health aides and personal care aides – Job outlook. https://www.aha.org/aha-center-health-innovation-market-scan/2021-09-14-studies-find-remote-monitoring-advanced-care