April 2006

Front Page Wall Street Journal Article Features Foundation Innovation “Hospital at Home”
The Foundation-supported Hospital at Home project, led by principal investigator, Bruce Leff, MD, at Johns Hopkins University, received front page coverage in the national edition of The Wall Street Journal on April 19, 2006. The story provides a comprehensive look at this innovative “get well at home program,” as the Journal called it, which provides professional, high quality acute care for older adults, and was created and tested with $5.9 million in grants from the Hartford Foundation. 

Hospital at Home (also called Program at Home by collaborator Scott Mader, MD, at the Portland Veterans Administration)  features multiple daily nursing visits, 24/7 availability of doctors, and needed tests like EKGs, X-rays, IVs, or oxygen therapy provided by health care professionals at home.  A recent study published by Leff and colleagues in the Annals of Internal Medicine found Hospital at Home to be a viable, patient-centered, cost-effective alternative to traditional, hospital-based acute care.

For patients in the study, who suffered from four common age-related conditions—pneumonia, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cellulitis—the research suggests that Hospital at Home reduced complications, diminished caregiver stress, and lowered health care costs by nearly one-third.

To read the complete story, “House Calls: Portland Hospital Gives Acutely Ill a Homecare Option,” please see: http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1453800731360.html.

The Foundation has also prepared a four-page brief on implementing Hospital at Home, which is available at www.jhartfound.org/ideas/hospitalathome.