The popular 'hospital-at-home' effort is at stake in the federal spending battle [View all]
Source: NPR
December 19, 2024 3:11 PM ET
Shane McMahon arrived at a home in Walpole, Massachusetts carrying a bag of medical equipment. He's a paramedic with the hospital-at-home program run by Mass General Brigham. His patient was 91-year-old Stephanie Joseph. "How is she feeling today?" McMahon asked Joseph's daughter, Ketline Edouard, who translated for her Haitian Creole-speaking mom. "She says she's feeling better," Edouard replied.
Joseph has diabetes and recently went to the emergency room because of high blood sugar. After a night there, she was given the option of being part of Mass General Brigham's "Home Hospital" program. "She says way better, more comfortable when she's home," Edouard said on her mom's behalf. "Way better than when she's at the hospital."
There are now 378 hospital at home programs like this in 39 states. These programs began during the pandemic when the federal government provided a waiver allowing Medicaid and Medicare to pay for hospital-level care at patients' homes. The waiver's been extended once. But the current waiver is set to expire on December 31.
A five-year extension of the waiver is included in a spending agreement congress unveiled this week to avert a government shutdown, but Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump encouraged Republicans to walk away from that deal Wednesday. It is not clear what will happen next with the stopgap spending measure.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/19/nx-s1-5234451/hospital-at-home-medicare-medicaid-congress-federal-shutdown
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