Power of Nurses: Architects of the Hospital at Home (HaH) Model

At the conclusion of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the Hospital at Home model, including its eligibility criteria and the regulatory framework that enabled its national expansion.

2. Explain the nurse's core functions in HaH, including intake assessment, daily monitoring, remote patient monitoring, and caregiver education.

3. Apply evidence-based strategies for escalation, acute care delivery, and patient and caregiver engagement across the HaH episode.

Hospital at Home (HaH) is one of the fastest-growing care delivery models in the United States. As of 2023, more than 300 U.S. hospitals had enrolled in the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home program, and the evidence behind the model spans two decades of clinical research. Nurses are the operational core of every HaH program. The daily nursing visit is not supplemental care. In HaH, it is the primary clinical encounter.

This course prepares frontline nurses to function effectively in the HaH setting. Hospital at Home (HaH) is also part of a broader shift toward decentralized care, in which acute clinical services are delivered outside the traditional inpatient unit through home-based care, remote monitoring, and virtual provider oversight. It covers the model's eligibility criteria and regulatory framework, the core nursing competencies required at admission and during daily monitoring, and the evidence-based approaches to escalation, acute care delivery, and patient and caregiver engagement.

As HaH programs expand nationally, nursing professionals are increasingly asked to take on clinical roles that differ substantially from traditional inpatient or home health practice. The HaH nurse works without immediate access to a team, manages all primary assessment and monitoring functions, makes independent escalation decisions, and serves as the sole daily clinical presence in the patient's home. Despite this expanded scope, most nurses working in or transitioning to HaH have had limited formal preparation for these responsibilities.

This course addresses the gap by providing nurses with the clinical knowledge, communication tools, and decision-making frameworks needed to deliver safe, structured, evidence-based care in the HaH setting.