Baptist Health Grows Hospital-at-Home After 300 Transfers

Baptist Health, based in Jacksonville, Fla., has expanded its hospital-at-home program to Baptist Medical Center South, according to Becker's Hospital Review. The move comes eight months after the system launched the model at its flagship, Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville, in February. More than 300 clinically stable adults have transferred from hospital beds to home-based acute care across the two sites since then, the health system said Oct. 25.

The expansion reflects a broader push among U.S. health systems to treat acute patients at home, a model that frees up inpatient capacity, can lower costs, and tends to improve patient satisfaction. Programs typically combine remote monitoring, in-person nursing visits, and virtual physician oversight for patients who are sick enough to need hospital-level care but stable enough to recover at home.

The open question for Baptist and its peers is reimbursement. The federal Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver, which underpins much of this growth, has faced repeated expiration deadlines, leaving systems to weigh long-term investment against policy uncertainty.