Hospital-Level Care at Home Gets Extended

Congress extends for 5 years hospital-level care at home. Tanya Albert Henry, contributing news writer at AMA, reports that Congress extended the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver for an additional five years. The waiver extension was part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the waiver program in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. The program grants waivers to individual hospitals to provide Medicare patients with inpatient-level home care. The AMA is a strong advocate for the program. The AMA commented:

Studies have shown that providing hospital-level care to patients at home is beneficial on many levels: lower mortality rates, fewer hospital-acquired conditions and lower costs in the 30 days following hospital discharge. The program can also help to address problems that arise due to hospital capacity constraints like emergency department boarding, since patients who are able to be effectively and safely treated at home free up beds for use by patients who can only be treated in an inpatient hospital setting. Meanwhile, patients and families like it. 

AMA CEO and Executive Vice President John J. Whyte, MD praised the move by Congress.

"[C]ontinuation of this policy truly embodies the mantra in medicine of treating patients in the right setting, at the right time. Furthermore, extending the waiver will provide much needed certainty to current participants and signal to health systems that Congress supports investment in innovative models of care than enhance capacity and improve patient outcomes,"

stated Dr. Whyte. Read more about this development here.