Ninety-two percent of hospital-at-home programs have been affected by the government shutdown, now in its fourth week, with more than half of healthcare organizations permanently or temporarily shutting down the service, a trade group found.
The federal government stoppage upended hospital at home, as the care model largely relied on a CMS waiver, which expired Sept. 30 with the shutdown, that allowed health systems to bill Medicare for the service line. Over 400 hospitals across 39 states received the waiver since its launch amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
After the shutdown, 35% of hospital-at-home programs stopped providing care to traditional Medicare patients under the CMS waiver, 20% ended treatment for patients who weren’t covered by the waiver, and 23% shifted all or part of the care to outpatient treatment at home, according to the survey of 140 programs by the Hospital at Home Users Group, which shared the data Oct. 28 with Becker’s.
Before the waiver expired, hospital-at-home programs admitted an average of 5.58 patients per day, a number that fell to 1.84 after the shutdown, a 67% drop in daily admissions, the group found.
