MONDAY, Jan. 6, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Adoption of the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) program is mainly limited to specific types of hospitals, according to a research letter published online Dec. 23 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Hashem E. Zikry, M.D., from the University of California in Los Angeles, and colleagues examined whether participation in the AHCAH program continued to increase after its initial extension using data from the 2022 American Hospital Association Annual Survey. Congress extended the AHCAH waiver (initially set to expire in December 2022) through the end of 2024.

The researchers identified 4,552 short-term acute care hospitals; after exclusions, 2,953 hospitals were included in the study. Of these, 299 (10 percent) obtained an AHCAH waiver: 249 preextension and 50 postextension. AHCAH hospitals were larger than nonparticipating hospitals and were more often teaching hospitals, not for profit, and located in metropolitan areas. A median of 11,388 annual admissions were seen at postextension hospitals compared with 15,131 in preextension hospitals. Overall, 48 and 40 percent of the postextension hospitals, respectively, had between 100 and 299 beds and more than 300 beds compared with 35 and 51 percent of the preextension hospitals, respectively. Eighty-one percent of preextension hospitals and 92 percent of postextension hospitals were not-for-profit; 91 and 98 percent of preextension and postextension hospitals, respectively, were located in metropolitan areas. Fifty-five and 26 percent of preextension hospitals, respectively, were minor and major teaching hospitals compared with 54 and 22 percent of postextension hospitals, respectively.

“The characteristics of postextension hospitals were similar to preextension hospitals, although postextension hospitals were somewhat smaller and demonstrated regional differences,” the authors write.

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