Amid efforts to push back the expiration date of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver, more patients are expressing their desire to participate in hospital-at-home programs.
That’s according to a new survey from Vivalink, a digital healthcare solutions company that offers remote patient monitoring (RPM).
“Hospital at home is a very fast growing and a very high interest market segment, and we’re paying a lot of attention to that market,” Vivalink CEO Jiang Li told Home Health Care News.
The survey responses come from over 1,000 U.S.-based individuals who are 40 years and older.
One of the survey’s key findings is that 84% of respondents are interested in participating in hospital-at-home-related monitoring, rather than being monitored in the hospital, so that they can return to their home in a more timely manner.
Survey respondents’ overwhelming desire to receive care in their home wasn’t surprising, according to Li.
“Human beings really like the comfort of their home, and if they can get health care in a friendly and familiar environment — it’s much less stressful,” he said.
Indeed, the survey also found that 77% of respondents said they would trust a recommendation from a health care professional that directed them to utilize hospital-at-home-related monitoring.
Plus, among the respondents who tried hospital at home, 84% said that the experience with their program was positive.
Survey respondents also reported an easy user experience with devices that were part of their care plan. Specifically, 49% of respondents said that RPM devices are easy to use.
On the flip side, the 16% of respondents who were not likely to participate in hospital-at-home programs named issues with devices as a big reason for this.
Still, Li pointed out that user experience with devices is very dependent on the company the hospital-at-home program decides to partner with.
“If you step back and look at all the devices available on the market, I’ll say the device to device variation, in terms of the patient experience, varies a lot,” he said. “It really depends on the [care] service provider, and what kind of device they choose to give to a patient, that in turn will significantly impact the patient experience.”
The survey also found that the awareness of hospital at home was generally lower among older adults. In fact, only 42% of respondents aged 70 and older had heard of hospital-at-home programs, compared to 77% of respondents in their 40s.
Older adults were also less likely to participate in hospital-at-home programs. Only 11% of respondents said they had previously participated, while 66% of respondents in their 40s had been part of these programs.
People who live urban areas were also more likely to participate in hospital-at-home programs than their counterparts living in rural communities.
However, respondents living in urban areas were less likely to prefer completely remote primary care than those living in rural communities.
Factors such as the number of hospitalizations a person had also played a role in willingness to partake in hospital-at-home programs. Respondents that had three hospitalizations or more over the past 12 months were more interested in hospital-at-home programs than those who had two hospitalizations or less.
Li hopes that the type of data highlighted in this survey will move the needle in terms of pushing the extension of the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver forward.
“There’s a lot of data and evidence already exists supporting the case for extension, this is another data point for them to consider,” he said.
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