Virtual Acute Care at Home cuts Length of Hospital Stay

New research shows that patients with acute illnesses who received virtual and at-home care with remote patient monitoring and as-needed in-person urgent care visits had shorter hospital stays than patients who received standard inpatient hospital care.For the study, researchers assessed the Safer@Home care model launched at the Los Angeles General Medical Center in September 2022. The care model is an expanded version of a virtual and at-home acute care model launched in 2020 for COVID-19 pneumonia patients requiring oxygen. The Safer@Home model cares for a wider array of acute conditions, including heart failure exacerbation, bacterial pneumonia and diabetic foot infection.The Safer@Home model is similar to the hospital-at-home care model popularized by the federal Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) waiver, which allows hospitals to forgo certain Medicare conditions of participation to provide acute, hospital-level care at home.