On the first day of May this year, George Hardy appeared at the Emergency Department of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The diagnosis was clear: Hardy was suffering from congestive heart failure–and the 84-year-old spent most of the next 24 hours at the emergency department. Then he went home. But he didn’t leave the hospital.
Instead, Hardy was admitted to Mass General Brigham via its Healthcare at Home program at his own residence in nearby Somerville. Over the next three weeks, he received the same care he’d have gotten inside a typical hospital: twice-daily nursing checks, provider visits, labs, physical assessments, and medications such as Lasix to treat his condition. But he slept in his own bed, moved around in his own house, and had his cat, Emma, and his parakeet, Fritz, by his side. He was a patient, just not one whose family had to drive to a hospital building to visit him.
