Hospital at Home is an innovative care model that enables hospital-level care to be provided from the comfort of your own home. Through in-person and virtual visits, you will receive safe, effective care from health-care providers experienced in hospital medicine and acute care. Despite being at home, you will still be “admitted” to the hospital, and remain the under the care of a hospital physician.
How Hospital at Home Works
If you or your loved-one needs to be admitted to Victoria General Hospital or Royal Jubilee Hospital and meet the eligibility criteria, you may be offered the alternative of receiving care at home. Participation is completely voluntary.
The hospital team, which includes physicians, nurses, allied health and pharmacists highly experienced in hospital medicine, will look after you both in-person and through virtual care methods.
Therapies and tests, such as vital signs monitoring, supplemental oxygen, IV medications and lab work, are all done while you stay in your home. You remain registered as a hospital patient, and can return to the hospital if required.
Safe and Effective Model of Care
Hospital at Home has been successfully implemented in other countries including Australia and across Europe. Many research studies have shown that it provides the same or better care than traditional hospitalization, including three Cochrane reviews, which represent the highest standard in evidence-based health care.
Some benefits include:
• A more patient-centred approach to hospital care
• Lower rates of hospital-based complications (infection, delirium or blood clots)
• Reduced pressures on our hospital beds and emergency departments
Help Us Ensure Hospital at Home Meets Your Needs
In the Fall of 2020 we sought the input from patients, their families and health-care staff to inform the development of our Hospital at Home program. We wanted to know what is important to you as we developed this innovative model of providing hospital care, the first of its kind in British Columbia. Your personal experiences and opinions, both as health-system users and health-care providers, matter to us and ensured our Hospital at Home program is as relevant and effective as possible.
A report summarizing our findings can be found here.
