SoK: Hospital at Home Model of Care – Toward Appropriate Use Cases and Other Challenges

At present there is a unique convergence of hospital infrastructure needs, desirable patient care outcomes, and economic incentives that are driving interest in the hospital at home (HaH) model of care we describe in this paper. While HaH is not new, the model’s adoption was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and has since continued to grow. Specifically, we focus on HaH appropriate use cases (and inappropriate use cases), technology development enabling innovative HaH services (sensors and command centers), and confounding challenges that need to be addressed for long term success. While most of the issues we discuss are universal, the examples we use are from within the U.S. hospital ecosystem. In future work we seek to compare U.S. HaH progress to progress in other countries around the world.