Presbyterian's Hospital at Home program, launched in 2008, is based on a model developed in the mid-1990s by Bruce Leff, M.D., a geriatrician and health services researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who noticed that many of his patients suffered poor outcomes after hospital stays.1 At Johns Hopkins, teams of physicians, nurses, and other clinical staff make house calls to treat elderly patients, many of whom either refuse to go to the hospital or are at such high risk for adverse events that physicians prefer not to admit them. For select patients, this approach produces superior outcomes at a lower cost than hospital care (see Results).The Hospital at Home model has struggled to gain traction elsewhere in the United States, however, in part because Medicare's fee-for-service program will not pay for its services. Presbyterian is able to secure reimbursement from its health plan, which covers 470,000 Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercially insured members throughout the state and has incentives to reduce costs and improve care.Presbyterian's program fits within a suite of services designed to deliver care in the home. These include home-based primary care, home health, hospice, and Complete Care, a care management program designed to improve coordination of services for patients with advanced illness and, when desired, avoid unwanted aggressive care at the end of life
