Hospital at Home (H@H) Information
In this section you will find general background information about hospital at home.
Hospital at Home Overview
Hospital at home is short-term, targeted service that provides a level of acute care in an individual’s own home, that is equivalent to that provided within a hospital. Hospital at home requires secondary care level specialist leadership with a designated responsible medical officer.
Care is delivered by multi-disciplinary teams of healthcare practitioners complying with current acute standards of care. It complements other community-based health and care initiatives which support patients to remain in their own homes. It provides a different level of interventions, such as access to intravenous fluids and oxygen. It has been in existence in a number of countries across the world for 25 years. The first hospital at home service was introduced in Scotland in 2011.
What are the benefits of Hospital at Home?
Emerging evidence of the experience and benefits of Hospital at Home in Scotland, UK and internationally has been published via Rapid Response: Admission avoidance hospital at home for older people with frailty (Healthcare Improvement Scotland 2022). This evidence suggests that Hospital at Home can be a cost-effective option with patients generally expressing a higher level of satisfaction compared with inpatient care. This evidence also suggests that Hospital at Home can be delivered safely without increased rates of death or re-admission to acute care and reduced likelihood of patients living in residential care after the acute episode.
The evidence base for hospital at home is growing and the UK Hospital at Home Society provides access to a comprehensive range of peer-reviewed journals that report on the development and testing of hospital at home services.