MEDICARE Home-Based Medical Care Can Reduce Hospitalizations and Lower Costs — But It’s Still Underutilized

While home-based medical care has been shown to reduce hospitalization rates and lower costs for both homebound and non-homebound populations alike, it continues to be drastically underutilized in the current health care ecosystem.

As a result, there are millions of older Americans — especially those living in rural areas — who are going without the type of life-changing, in-home care they need.

That’s according to a new study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

To better understand the use of home-based medical care, a team of researchers from Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins University, Wake Forest University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania analyzed seven years’ worth of data from the National Health and Aging Trend Study (NHATS). Broadly, the NHATS is an annual comprehensive, population-based survey of late-life disability trends and trajectories.

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