Rethinking Hospital-at-Home Policy to Achieve Scale and Impact

Evidence for the benefits of hospital-at-home programs—including decreases in readmissions, iatrogenic complications, and spending—has accumulated over the course of 3 decades.¹ Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) waiver, allowing hospitals to claim equal reimbursement for Medicare beneficiaries admitted to hospital-at-home programs as traditional inpatient care. This policy unleashed an initial surge of interest, with more than 400 hospitals obtaining the waiver.^{2 ...}

Kilaru AS, Landon S, D’Souza F, Burke RE. Rethinking Hospital-at-Home Policy to Achieve Scale and Impact. JAMA Intern Med. Published online April 06, 2026. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.0389