Hospital-at-Home: New Technology Brings Acute Care to Patients’ Homes
Hospital-at-home programs combine in-person care in concordance with remote monitoring, wearables, artificial intelligence, and telehealth to provide selected individuals with comprehensive care from the comfort of their own home. This care can match and even exceed levels of care provided in the hospital, while keeping hospital beds open for those who need it most. Examples of some services provided within this realm are medication administration, diagnostic imaging, physical or occupational therapy, and daily living assistance.
Currently, care is focused on older individuals, as they are more at risk from iatrogenic complications from hospital stays. However, this model has the potential to serve a much larger population, especially those with acute or chronic conditions. Outcomes from this model of care are overwhelmingly positive. Cost savings are attributed to both the patient and hospital, hospitalization is reduced, and the hybrid model may help ease staffing burdens. Currently, one of the largest hurdles with this model is the payment for services the hospital would receive from insurance companies or government programs.
Admission begins in the outpatient setting, with the emergency or ambulatory care physician determining whether a patient’s clinical picture is suitable for HaH treatment. The patient’s home environment is then assessed for safety; if criteria are met, the patient is transported home and care begins immediately
Need to understand what the criteria is to be eligible and why.
They soon proved their theory: total costs, length of admission, and cases of acute delirium in elderly patients dropped, while patients and caregivers enrolled in the newly established HaH program reported less stress and an overall positive opinion of the care they received
With improved monitoring and care, ideally conditions and complications would be able to be identified and treated or managed sooner rather than later
Length of stay and overall spending is reduced, and remote monitoring and hybrid staffing models may help address workforce shortages and support hospital capacity management [10]. These programs also offer significant cost savings by helping to avoid the need for construction of additional physical hospital space
This is very encouraging to see. More time out of clinical settings may even be attributed to higher levels of life satisfaction, which could also help with health outcomes.
Today’s technologies—such as large language models for monitoring and predictive analytics, remote monitoring via digital sensors, expanding options for portable diagnostic testing, telehealth infrastructure, automated medication administration, and even drone delivery of supplies—make this model of care increasingly feasible
What other technology or systems could be helpful to implement?
Reference
Congdon, J. (2026, April 20). Hospital-at-home: New technology brings acute care to patients’ homes. U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13094887/
No generative AI was used in the writing of this post
