Introduction:

Hospital at Home (HAH) started in our area at the end of 2007; currently it consists of 3 units, 30 beds and 80% territorial coverage. It has two main aims: to avoid unnecessary hospital admission and to allow early discharge. Objective: to analyze the results of HAH in the last 10 years in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Method:

Retrospective analysis of patients discharged in HAH (January 2009-December 2018) to define patient typology and source of admission, to evaluate indicators of length of stay, return to hospital, 30-day readmission rate, mortality rate, severity according to the APR-DRG classification system and cost compared to conventional hospitalization.

Results:

6,033 patients have been discharged. 86% of patients were admitted through a medical process with a predominance of respiratory diseases (43.7%). The modality of Hospital admission avoidance was 79% of the admissions in HAH. The average length of stay in HAH was 7.1 days; the return to the hospital due to complications was 4.1%. Mortality rate was 2.3%, and the 30-day readmission rate was 12.2 %, both lower than the average of the Internal Medicine units. The severity according to the APR-DRG classification system of patients admitted in HAH was significantly higher than in the Short Stay Hospital Unit but less than conventional hospitalization in Internal Medicine Units, as expected. The cost of structure per day of stay in HAH is approximately 3 times lower than conventional hospitalization.

Conclusions:

HAH has been a useful alternative to conventional hospitalization, mainly for medical pathology of patients who, requiring admission, did not need the entire hospital infrastructure.

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