AJMC September 10, 2021
A framework centered around cost, quality, and equity is essential to define the value of hospital-at-home programs.
ABSTRACT
On November 25, 2020, CMS announced the creation of an Acute Hospital Care at Home program to reimburse qualifying hospital-at-home models. As we increasingly adopt the Acute Hospital Care at Home program and similar home-based services, it is crucial to better define the value of these programs and their appropriate reimbursement rates. We provide a framework centered around cost, quality, and equity to help accomplish this task. Quality reporting should use both inpatient-specific and home health care–specific metrics, equity-focused process metrics and risk-adjusted outcome metrics, and validated disease-specific tools. Costs should be measured comprehensively and uniformly through the use of time-driven activity-based...