Proportion of medical admissions that may be hospitalised at home and their service utilisation patterns: a single-centre, descriptive retrospective cohort study in Singapore

Objectives For eligible patient groups, hospital-at-home (HaH) programmes have been shown to deliver equivalent patient outcomes with cost reduction compared with standard care. This study aims to establish a benchmark of inpatient admissions that could potentially be substituted by HaH services.Design Descriptive retrospective cohort study.Setting Academic tertiary hospital in Singapore.Participants 124 253 medical admissions over 20 months (January 2016 to August 2017).Primary and secondary outcome measures The primary measure was the proportion of hospitalised patients who may be eligible for HaH, based on eligibility criteria adapted for the Singapore context. The secondary measures were the utilisation patterns and outcomes of these patients.Results Applying generalised eligibility criteria to the retrospective dataset showed that 53.0% of 124 253 medical admissions fitted the eligibility criteria for HaH based on administrative data. 46.8% of such patients had a length of stay