Providers and lawmakers are pushing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to expand its Waiver Program For acute hospital care at home. In this effort, they are often quick to say that this style of care improves the patient experience and enables hospitals to better manage capacity, ensuring beds are available for the sickest patients.
Citing these reasons is an important part of ensuring permanent reimbursement for family hospital programs, but hospital executives believe some less-discussed benefits should also be introduced into the conversation.They dig into some of these extra benefits on Wednesday control panel Presented by Home Senior Care Alliance and McDermott+Consulting.
Discussion centered on bipartisan need for Congress to pass Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act, which would extend CMS’ waiver program by two years beyond the public health emergency’s expiration date. Dr. Konstantinos Michaeldis, medical director of UMass Memorial Health Hospital, said passing the bill would not only allow hospitals to provide more care and provide a more comfortable recovery environment for patients, but also help ease some health care workers. of burnout. family plan.
“We’ve had a lot of people come to us and say, ‘You know, I’m really leaving this industry because I’m so tired, but I feel like coming back to our hospital program has reinvigorated me,'” he said.
Nursing staff at home hospitals told Dr. Michaelidis that by meeting patients and their families at home, they felt like a more integrated and respected part of the care team. They say the “humanity of the family” makes the care they provide feel more valuable and less busy.
Mae Centeno, chief nursing officer for virtual nursing services at the Texas Health Resource Center, said the nurses she worked with expressed similar sentiments. She said nurses who planned to retire early due to burnout changed their minds after turning to home care.
“Many nurses felt it was a breath of fresh air,” Centeno said. “We’re giving them the opportunity to really continue to use their skills, but in a different way.”
According to Dr. Michael Maniaci, medical director of Mayo Clinic Advanced Care at Home, while a home environment is certainly more relaxing than a hospital, it’s also safer.
Flexibility to keep patients, especially immunocompromised ones, out of crowded hospitals was a priority in the early months of the pandemic, but Dr. Maniaci said that option would still be to protect low acuity An important way for patients to avoid hospitalization – acquired infection.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate Infections resulting from hospitalizations in the United States account for approximately 1.7 million infections and 99,000 related deaths each year.
Dr. Maniaci highlights another benefit of home hospitals: Providers can see what’s going on inside a patient’s home and better understand how they maintain their care plan.
“Even though it’s a virtual connection with the patient at home, it’s a very intimate experience,” he said. “I can see my patients at home in their favorite chairs, with their families and their dogs, in their natural environment, and we work together to figure out what works best for them. I can watch to how they take care of themselves every day, so I’m able to create a personalized care plan.”
Dr. Maniaci and his other speakers argued that home care offers many benefits in addition to allowing hospitals to treat more patients. They argue that as the fight for permanent reimbursement continues, so too should the ability of the care model to improve patient outcomes and caregiver job satisfaction.
Photo: Willowpix, Getty Images
