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News and Market Developments
MedCity News: How Can Hospital-at-Home Grow Outside the Nation’s Biggest Health Systems? (8/27) – Despite ongoing uncertainty around hospital at home reimbursement, the model continues to expand, but not evenly. Major academic medical centers and large national systems are growing their programs, adding more virtual beds, and partnering with national vendors to deliver care at home. Meanwhile, regional health systems and mid-size hospitals are still evaluating whether the model is financially feasible. Regional health systems can develop smaller, more focused programs to deliver strong clinical and operational value within hospital capacity. Then, growth can happen incrementally to support more staff and serve more patients efficiently using regional health systems’ existing resources.
American Heart Association: Novel Virtual Care Program Enhances At-Home Support for People with Heart Failure (8/26) - American Heart Association (AHA) and remote chronic disease monitoring platform Cadence have unveiled a collaboration to send heart failure patients home from the hospital with a virtual care support team. The AHA Connected Care pilot program aims to reduce 30-day readmissions by addressing “critical gaps in heart failure care” that occur after heart failure patients leave the hospital.
Mayo Clinic: Advanced Care at Home Helped Make A Wedding Day Possible (8/26) – Advanced Care at Home offers patients high-acuity care, delivered in the comfort of their home. With around-the-clock access, advanced technology and a dedicated in-home care team, patients receive comprehensive treatment while minimizing stress and disruption to daily life. With Advanced Care at Home, we can treat, monitor and communicate with patients as we would in a hospital setting, without recreating the feeling of being in a hospital setting. For Kenneth, receiving treatment at home allowed him to maintain his routine, enjoy meals and sleep without interruption. As the end of his treatment neared and his strength improved, Kenneth and Susan began thinking about a wedding ceremony again.
Becker’s Health IT: The Tech Making Health Systems Value-Based Care Hubs (8/25) – Mounting financial pressures, workforce shortages, and rising patient demand are pushing health systems to rethink how they deliver care. By embracing value-based care and new technologies, organizations aim to curb costly emergency visits, ease capacity strains, and deliver better outcomes while operating under tighter margins. One strategy health systems are adopting is integrating home-based care models for high-risk patient populations to help navigate their care transitions with post-discharge follow-ups to reduce avoidable ED visits and readmissions.
McKnights Home Care: BrightStar Navigates Shifting Regulatory Landscape with Focus on Technology, Person-Centered Care (8/20) – BrightStar Care has continued to grow and succeed despite these persistent headwinds. On this McKnight’s Newsmakers podcast, BrightStar Care CEO Andrew Ray spoke about some of the most important home care policy changes of late — including the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act and possible changes to the joint-employer standard — and divulged the tactics he uses to produce strong operational outcomes.
Health Leaders: Hospital at Home Success Requires Patience, Leadership Alignment, and New Financial Frameworks (8/19) – Hospital at home programs show strong patient satisfaction, fewer readmissions, and better outcomes for patients. The strategy can free up beds and cut costs for health systems that need sustainable capacity relief. With Medicare reimbursement dependent on a CMS waiver, hospital chief financial officers are designing hospital at home financial structures to ensure that the programs are sustainable, scalable, and suitable for the unique care model. The ground-up business case for hospital at home includes per-encounter variable costs, right-sized capital investments, and deliberate sequencing of resource deployment.
The Hill: Hospital at Home Treatment is Working — Congress Must Now Give it a Future (8/15) – The Hill published an opinion article advocating for the extension of hospital at home reimbursement via the passage of the Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act. The authors, both researchers and medical students, argue that the hospital at home data is compelling, the infrastructure is growing, and the need is real. Hospital at home is modernizing medicine, and it’s time for legislation to catch up.
Modern Healthcare: CMS Greenlights New Hospital-at-Home Plans for Two Health Systems (8/14) – Penn Medicine and Saint Francis Health System recently received federal go-ahead to launch hospital at home programs. CMS approved waivers for Saint Francis Health System’s program at two facilities and administrators said the want to launch the program in late fall regardless of whether the Medicare Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver expires. CMS approved Penn Medicine’s hospital at home programs at seven facilities.
The Boston Globe: Congress Should Reauthorize Hospital-at-Home (8/5) – Over the past five years, hospitals struggling with overcrowding have experimented with an innovative idea: providing hospital-level care at home. Results, so far, are promising. With the authority for those services soon set to expire, Congress should act to let them continue.
Home Health Care News: What a Supercharged Hospital-at-Home Program Would Mean for the Home Health Industry (7/31) – The home-based care industry is enthusiastically looking forward to progress in the hospital at home (HaH) movement. Growth in the HaH model benefits health systems with existing programs, while home health providers are also positioned to gain from the broader adoption of this approach. This article discusses how HaH will re-shape the home health industry and enhance home health providers’ role in the health care ecosystem.
American Hospital Association: How 4 Providers Successfully Launched Hospital-at-Home Programs (7/29) – American Hospital Association profiled four health systems’ hospital at home strategies. Representatives from Advocate Health, Mass General Brigham, OSU Wexner Medical Center, and Iris Telehealth shared how they are improving outcomes, reducing readmissions, and eliminating disparities using home-based care. The profile focuses on patient-centered care that leads to high patient and provider satisfaction rates.
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