{"id":379178,"date":"2025-11-14T21:07:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T21:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/379178\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T21:07:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T21:07:19","slug":"massachusetts-home-hospital-programs-reopen-following-government-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/379178\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts home hospital programs reopen following government shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

After weeks away, home hospital employees were \u201cexuberant\u201d to be able to accept patients again, said Heather O\u2019Sullivan, president and chief operating officer of MGB\u2019s Healthcare at Home. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just absolutely palpable, the excitement and appreciation,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan said. <\/p>\n

UMass Memorial Medical Center will begin readmitting patients to their service on Monday. The Worcester hospital plans to slowly admit patients over the next week, beginning with up to eight or nine patients the first day. <\/p>\n

The home hospital program restart could not be more needed, as many patients are stuck \u201cboarding,\u201d or waiting in the emergency department for hospital beds to open up, said Dr. Constantinos \u201cTaki\u201d Michaelidis, director of Hospital and Home at UMass Memorial Health. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve actually had a very, very tough October. We\u2019ve had more boarding than we\u2019ve had in almost a year and a half, with close to about 100 patients boarding in the emergency department every day,\u201d Michaelidis said. \u201cSo this is a really good time for us to get back up.\u201d <\/p>\n

Home hospital programs<\/a> have become increasingly popular since they were first permitted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to ease an acute shortage of hospital beds. The idea is that patients at home can move more freely, take more time to recover, and are exposed to fewer hospital-acquired infections. <\/p>\n

The results in the five years since the pandemic have been promising. Because patients are at home, there\u2019s no rush to get them out of an in-demand hospital bed, so data suggest <\/b>they can spend more time recovering. Hospital-at-home patients were discharged to skilled nursing homes less than 1 percent of the time, while patients in traditional hospital settings were sent to nursing facilities at a rate of 11 percent, according to a report from the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. The care and costs of treating patients in the hospital and at home are virtually the same. <\/p>\n

The largest difference between brick-and-mortar and home hospital care is the physical presence of nurses. Patients at home are seen a few times a day by paramedics and nurses who administer medicines, draw blood, and facilitate video calls between the patient and their doctors. Patients\u2019 vitals are also continuously checked by a remote monitoring system. <\/p>\n

While the home hospital program reopening is a welcome reprieve for overburdened hospital systems, it\u2019s not permanent. The waiver extension that allows them to reopen only goes until Jan. 30, leaving just a couple months for Congress to pass another waiver before the programs would have to close again. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe want Congress to instill a good dose of confidence in all of us, such that we can all continue to invest in and grow the program,\u201d Michaelidis said. \u201cThat\u2019s our real hope.\u201d <\/p>\n

Marin Wolf can be reached at marin.wolf@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After weeks away, home hospital employees were \u201cexuberant\u201d to be able to accept patients again, said Heather O\u2019Sullivan,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":379179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-379178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115550096285800593","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}