Congress is looking to extend a Medicare program that pays hospitals to provide acute inpatient care in patients’ homes, even as questions remain about how that program impacts health outcomes and health care costs. Hospitals are seeking at least a five-year extension of the Acute Hospital Care at Home program, which was launched during the pandemic to help overstretched hospitals deal with capacity issues. The program expires Dec.
31 unless Congress acts. Hospitals have continued the program after the pandemic for patients who need hospital-level care but can be monitored from home, freeing up beds for other patients. Both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee have advanced bills that would extend the program for five years, with both panels citing the need to ensure Medicare beneficiaries continue to have access to it.
A five-year extension will allow for more time to gather data while allowing hospitals to get their programs off of the ground, hospital groups say. “One of the common themes we have heard from our members is that long-term stability is needed within the H@H [hospital-at-home] program,” Lisa Kidder Hrobsky, senior vice president of advocacy and political affairs for the American Hospital Association, wrote in an April letter to Reps. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.
, who have introduced a third bill that would extend the program. The AHA hopes that will lead to a “permanent version of the .
