Last update:
19-Mar-2015

In recent years the various social, financial and demographic challenges of health systems worldwide have forced the reorientation of social and national organizations towards new forms of community health care. "Hospital at home" is one of the new models that has been developed very well and has gained significant scientific interest in some countries due to its efficiency and effectiveness. This review describes the way this new model of patient care is organized in order to be both beneficial to patients and advantageous to health systems. This service has been developed differently in various countries, with the involvement of either an interdisciplinary team or a duet of a doctor and a nurse. Patients with acute or chronic diseases can receive complex, high standard care at home. Patient outcome and safety, quality of life and patient satisfaction are equivalent to those in hospital care. Cost evaluation of this model should be planned within the general design of the services and the budget of every national health system. The hospital at home model appears to conform to the aims of health care reform for high quality patient-centered care. For the Greek public sector the application of such an entrepreneurial, groundbreaking, cost-efficient and high quality model could great improvement in the efforts towards best patient care, using as a measure of comparison the experience of the private sector home hospital care agencies.

Key words: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Home hospitalization, Hospital at home, Organization, Satisfaction.