The Brigham’s Home Hospital program provided care for 65 acutely ill patients at home. In addition to freeing up beds for patients at the hospital, the Home Hospital program offered a care option for patients who may have otherwise deferred care during the pandemic.
‘The home hospital model has a huge impact on the ongoing response to COVID-19 pandemic.’
The results of the retrospective analysis are published in The Journal of General Internal Medicine.
“Our study shows that another benefit of home hospital care is that it can be a part of the pandemic playbook,” said corresponding author David Levine, MD, MPH, MA, of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at the Brigham.
During COVID-19, the Home Hospital program not only treated patients who were positive for COVID-19, but also other patients with infections or exacerbations of heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma.
Home Hospital patients received a daily in-home or remote visit from an attending general internist and two daily in-home visits from a registered nurse from Mass General Brigham Home Care; they also had access to 24-hour physician coverage and cutting-edge connectivity, including continuous monitoring, video and texting.
Over the period studied, 65 acutely ill patients were cared at home. Cumulatively, they were cared for at home for 419 days or the equivalent of 5 percent of all medicine patients without COVID-19 who were cared for at the hospitals during that time.
Researchers also noted that their study was limited to two sites, to a small cohort of clinicians, and to the pandemic conditions in Boston.
Home hospital programs can create much-needed capacity by building on programs that many hospitals already have in place and do not require the financial and staffing resources of other approaches, such as field hospitals.
Source: Medindia
