NJ hospital admitting patients to their own home

TEANECK — The constant beeping from neighboring rooms. Seemingly nonstop interruptions during the night. Limited in-person interaction with family and friends.

There are plenty of inconveniences related to receiving top-notch care at a hospital. But at least one health care institution in New Jersey is giving select patients the ability to avoid all of those cons, but still get the same high-level acute care they'd receive at the hospital.

Holy Name Medical Center is currently handling the 30th admission into its Hospital at Home program — a program tested and approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — which gives patients as much attention and treatment as they'd receive during a hospital stay, but from the comfort of their own home.

"The nurse will come visit you twice a day, they will set up the IVs and whatever else is necessary, hook you up to home monitoring devices," Michael Maron, president and CEO of Holy Name, told New Jersey 101.5.

Among the tools provided to at-home patients is a call button that can dispatch a nurse to a patient's home at any time of day or night.

Launched this summer, the program is open to Medicare patients who require treatment for acute conditions such as COPD, congestive heart failure, skin infections, and COVID-19, and are willing to receive hospital care at home. Other conditions need to be met as well — the patient must have someone at home who can participate in their care, and the patient can't live far from the hospital.

Patients have the option to transfer to traditional hospital care at any time.

Maron suggested the at-home program serves an even greater purpose during the coronavirus pandemic — infected patients will present less of a threat to others.

Maron said the program is only possible because of advanced technology and medicine that exist today.

"I think it will absolutely revolutionize the delivery of acute care," Maron said of Hospital at Home. "IT will take some time. There's going to be some resistance to it, even on the provider community side, because not everybody has the infrastructure to support it."

Contact reporter Dino Flammia at dino.flammia@townsquaremedia.com.