Introduction:

Hospitalization at Home (HaH) Units present differences in their content and conditions of care. The Basque HaH Society initiated a research project in 2018 to define useful indicators to compare the activity of teams with different care content. One phase of the project involved recording characteristics of episodes attended and care provided. It is of interest to disclose the results of the registry.

Method:

Between May 1 and May 31, 2021, 9 Units recorded certain characteristics of the patients seen, as well as type, frequency and duration of visits performed. Descriptive data on these variables are shown for the overall series and for each unit.

Results:

1171 episodes and 8363 visits in 14458 stays were analysed (82% of actual stays). On average, 65% of patients received a visit during working days and 42% during non-working days. The percentage of cases in each clinical type varied according to Units: acute pathology between 12 and 48%; palliative care between 20% and 40%; surgical pathology between 2.3 and 30%. There were also differences in age, sex and geographical dispersion. Mortality and hospital referral varied between Units and also between pathologies. The duration of direct care varied between Units from 24.4 to 35.9 min, and the duration of travel for each visit from 11.9 to 25 min, probably related to the type of pathology and geographical dispersion, respectively.

Conclusions:

There are indeed differences in the content and working conditions of the different HaH Units. It is necessary to analyse how much they influence the activity and outcome measures in order to have adjusted indicators.

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