Providers, vendors urge Congress to extend hospital-at-home
Providers, vendors urge Congress to extend hospital-at-home Diane Eastabrook
More than 50 stakeholders signed a letter saying an extension of CMS' Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver program is necessary for the model’s future.
Providers, associations, technology companies and other health organizations are calling on Congress to extend a federal waiver program offering equal Medicare reimbursement for hospital-at-home care. The program is due to expire at the end of 2024.In a Monday letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), more than 50 stakeholders said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver program should be extended by at least five years to build out logistics, supply chains and staffing to support the model’s future.Related: Could Sanford Health's rural hospital-at-home program be a model?
Organizations signing the letter included groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Telemedicine Association; companies that offer hospital-at-home technology such as GE HealthCare, Medically Home and Biofourmis; and providers with hospital-at-home programs such as Advocate Health, Geisinger, Henry Ford Health, Johns Hopkins Health System and Mass General Brigham. The hospital-at-home model allows patients to receive acute-level care at home through telehealth and in-person visits, supplemented with remote monitoring. The model gained steam during the COVID-19 pandemic: CMS launched the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver program in 2020 in an effort to alleviate hospital overcrowding. Under the waiver, hospitals are reimbursed through Medicare at the same rate for home-based care as for facility-based care. More than 300 hospitals across the country offer home-based hospital care through the program.CMS is gathering comments about hospital-at-home and will make recommendations to Congress this fall regarding whether to extend the waiver program, make it permanent or end it. The stakeholders said in the letter extending the waiver program would allow home-based services “to be developed equitably across populations everywhere” by boosting hospital capacity without increasing health system costs.
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EMAIL ADDRESS Advocates of hospital-at-home say it could help fill gaps in patient care, especially in rural America where many hospitals have closed in recent years. Sanford Health, one of the country's largest rural health systems, will begin offering home-based hospital care from Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, North Dakota, this summer. The organization signed Monday's letter to Congress.A November research letter published in JAMA Health Forum found 11,000 patients admitted to acute care at home programs during a 16-month period experienced low mortality rates and minimal complications. However, National Nurses United, which represents 225,000 nurses around the country, has criticized the model for failing to provide “hands-on, human-to-human care” that it says acutely ill patients require. Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Sanford’s facility as the Sanford Medicare Center. Also, due to an editorial error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the American Telemedicine Association as the American Telehealth Association.