What is Hospital at Home?

A consensus definition on Hospital at Home was presented at the World Hospital at Home Congress 2023 by Professor Michael Montalto, on behalf of the Scientific Committee.

"Hospital at Home/ Hospital in the Home (HaH/ HITH) is an acute clinical service that takes staff, equipment, technologies, medication and skills usually provided in hospitals and delivers that hospital care to selected people in their homes or in nursing homes. It substitutes for acute inpatient hospital care.

It’s goal is to improve the lives of sick people who need hospitals, by changing the culture of hospitals to deliver hospital-level care at home."

  

A definition of what Hospital at Home is has become necessary due to the rapid growth of our field. This definition proposed by the WHAHC Scientific Committee does not intend to replace or negate any existing national definitions. Its aim is to provide a solid foundation on which discussion can be built, and to be a useful tool to support newly created programs and associations in countries where HaH has not previosly existed.

 

HaH is: Subject to regulatory and governance obligations; Care hospital directed and/ or by specialist physician/s; Episodic; 24/7; Fully responsible for the patient – provides all medical, nursing, allied care; observation, diagnostics and therapeutics during the episode at home.

HaH is not: Outpatient care (thus, not self-administered intravenous treatment, and not OPAT); A hospital prevention program; A community-based chronic disease management program; Solely virtual care or remote telemonitoring; Day facility-based treatment; Primary home care; Community nursing or standard skilled home health care;

Consent: patients should consent to HaH care, and be allowed to withdraw that consent with the right of transfer back to a traditional inpatient hospital ward.