Activities
Building the Hospital at Home Community
With sites around the country, the Hospital at Home Users Group™ conducts most of its work virtually. Following a kick-off meeting in Washington, DC in May 2019, the Users Group has greatly expanded its activities and resources, keeping up with the growing momentum of the home-based acute care movement.
The Users Group cultivates a vibrant online community for Hospital at Home news, networking, and discussion on Basecamp. Additionally, the organization provides a robust Technical Assistance Center with original content and contributions from the community in critical focus areas. Virtual Office Hours, small-group consulting calls facilitated by a Hospital at Home expert, are held monthly.
Additionally, the group maintains work groups organized around program standards, quality indicators, and regulatory and reimbursement issues. Each of these is creating new frameworks to help guide the development of new Hospital at Home programs and to create a policy environment that is supportive of this model of home-based acute care.
Throughout the year, the Users Group–in partnership with the American Academy of Home Care Medicine and with funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation—offers webinars that provide practical information and explore topics of interest for the field.
The Hospital at Home Users Group proudly hosts a Virtual Annual Meeting, now in partnership with the American Academy of Home Care Medicine. This event is the largest gathering of the Hospital at Home community in North America, and an opportunity to share the latest in acute care at home practice, policy, and research.
Research projects underway
The Users Group also conducts research about the larger Hospital at Home community and movement. Currently, there is one project underway.
Minimum Data Set Initiative:
The Users Group Quality Indicators Council is undertaking an ambitious project to build a Minimum Data Set (MDS), a de-identified, patient-level dataset that seeks to capture information on all patients enrolled in HaH programs nationwide. The MDS aims to collect standardized data on patients and outcomes to develop benchmarks, support future development of HaH quality indicators, support individual programs as they develop reporting and evaluation processes, inform policy and reimbursement efforts, and facilitate research to strengthen and expand HaH implementation. Read the executive summary of the project.
But this effort won’t be successful without YOUR participation – 33 individual hospitals have already signed up, and we are calling on all of our members to participate!
Participating hospitals receive annual benchmarking reports to help:
- Assess program performance;
- Identify areas for growth and improvement;
- Demonstrate program value to internal and external stakeholders; and
- Move the policy and regulatory conversation forward with a national data set.
To participate, please complete the MDS Interest Form and we will follow up with you shortly. Questions? Contact Gabrielle Schiller (gabrielle.schiller@mssm.edu) or Annabel Steiner (annabel.steiner@mssm.edu).