The first Hospital at Home (H@H) service was established in Scotland in 2011 in NHS Lanarkshire.
Locally, Hospital at Home covers a geographical area of over 950 square miles within locality areas of South and East Ayrshire.
Hospital at Home is a short-term, targeted intervention that aims to provide a level of acute hospital care in a person’s own home or normal place of care that is equivalent to that provided within a hospital.
Although this type of care is delivered in the community, Hospital at Home differs from other types of community based care services because it is aimed at treating short, time-limited acute care needs but it is not intended to prevent or reduce access to specialist care.
In Scotland there is a national definition for Hospital at Home. The graphic below shows how the model sits within the wider health and social care system.
Rethinking health services operations to improve patient experience of healthcare journey
The key features of Hospital at Home in Scotland include:
- Patient access to a medical consultant who will have complete oversight for their care plan
- It is designed to address short-term, time-limited, acute care episodes
- It is not intended to prevent access to specialist acute care where needed.
- Patients are treated as though admitted to hospital
- Hospital at Home has urgent access to hospital-level diagnostics
- Care is delivered by multidisciplinary teams of healthcare professionals fully complying with current acute standards of care.
Hospital at Home provides:
- A joined up approach to care provision –avoiding duplication and gaps
- Ensures Integration of services needed for individual tailoring of intervention/support
- Optimises the use of resources and service availability to meet patient needs
Get in touch
Enquiries for Hospital at Home can be made via the UHA switchboard. Please be aware that clinical advice and referrals cannot be made from members of the public via this number.