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Hospitals will be allowed to care for Medicare patients in their own homes during the pandemic under a government program called Acute Hospital Care at Home, announced in November. It is designed to help hospitals deal with the latest surge.

Some hospitals already offer patients with private insurance the choice of getting care at home instead of in the hospital. The pandemic dramatically boosted use of such programs.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it will let hospitals quickly launch home programs, which will offer around-the-clock electronic monitoring for Medicare and Medicare Advantage patients who are sick enough to be hospitalized, but don’t need intensive care.

“We’re at a new level of crisis response with COVID-19,” and this option will help hospitals increase their capacity to help more patients, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. Medicare would pay hospitals the same rate as for in-hospital care.

Six health systems already offering “hospital-at-home” care were approved to participate in the Medicare program immediately.

Hospitals need to meet certain standards to participate. Those include providing twice-daily visits by medical workers, and equipment such as blood pressure and oxygen-level monitors, and keeping patients connected via an iPad or other device to a command center should they need help.

Participating hospitals will also be required to investigate patients’ home environment in advance to assess both medical and non-medical factors, including the presence of working utilities, possible physical barriers and screening for domestic violence concerns.

What patients are eligible?

COVID-19 patients are eligible. But so are patients with more than 60 acute conditions, including asthma, congestive heart failure, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Beneficiaries will only be admitted from emergency departments and inpatient hospital beds, and an in-person physician evaluation is required prior to starting care at home.

CMS said it anticipates patients may value the ability to spend time with family and caregivers at home without the visitation restrictions that exist in traditional hospital settings.

Additionally, CMA noted that patients and their families not diagnosed with COVID-19 may prefer to receive care in their homes if local hospitals are seeing a larger number of patients with COVID-19.

It is the patient’s choice to receive these services in their home or in a traditional hospital setting, and patients who do not wish to receive them in their home will not be required to.

The latest in several new programs

Earlier in the pandemic, CMS expanded coverage for telemedicine appointments and launched a program paying for care in field hospitals and hotels.

“This will help health systems create capacity to care for patients during the surge,” said Dr. Bruce Leff, a geriatrics professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a home hospital pioneer.

He said hospital-at-home programs have proven benefits for patients and can prevent complications they might experience in a hospital.

Leff helped CMS plan the program, along with experts at major hospitals already running such programs and three companies that contract with hospitals to run programs for them: Medically Home, Contessa Health and Dispatch Health.

Since the pandemic began, all three companies have reported a surge of new, privately insured patients choosing to stay at home, where they can be more comfortable and have family around.

Medically Home Chief Executive Rami Karjian said he hopes elderly patients who might have been deferring care during the pandemic “will now get the care they need.”

CMS stressed that the new program was based on models of at-home hospital care throughout the country that have seen prior success in several leading hospital institutions and networks, and reported in academic journals, including a major study funded by a Healthcare Innovation Award from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

In a statement, CMS said, “The development of this program was informed by extensive consultation with both academic and private sector industry leaders to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to protect patients, and at no point will patient safety be compromised.”

Ed. Note: Many area hospitals offer home care to Medicare patients, but this program is different. Check with your hospital to find out when or if it may offer acute hospital care to patients at home.

— AP, with additional information from CMS