Though Hospital at Home programs have been around for years, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their adoption across the country to help ensure continuity of care amid rising infection rates. Since then, they’ve remained a valuable and effective option for patient care, improving patient outcomes and engagement.
The unexpected upside of the pandemic has been accelerated innovation and connectivity that changed our ways of interacting. The concept of providing hospital care at home, introduced more than 20 years ago, gained traction in response to the concern for widespread hospital overcrowding and an attempt to mitigate the risk of life-threatening infection. We’re seeing more evidence that hospital-at-home models optimize patient outcomes and reduce costs to health care organizations.
Over the last two years, the U.S. healthcare system has worked around the clock to care for countless patients. The struggle has been intense, and hospitals and health systems nationwide have risen to the challenge.
Still, the heavy influx of patients resurfaced a long-standing problem. Healthcare disparities remain significant, drastically reducing access to quality care services for racial, ethnic and cultural minority groups.
A growing number of health systems, hospitals and other providers are turning to safe alternatives to traditional health care delivery. Remote patient monitoring services are not new, but the pandemic has accelerated interest and adoption of RPM services after COVID-19 presented various health and safety risks for in-person care. Remote patient monitoring services are growing in popularity, and they are becoming increasingly necessary amid pandemic challenges, staff shortages, high census and decreasing reimbursement.
