Hospital at Home Programme – September 2026 update

Hospital at Home

Hospital at Home (H@H) is a short-term, targeted intervention providing acute level hospital care in an individual’s home or homely setting.

Key benefits:

• High patient satisfaction and preference across a range of measures
• Reduces pressure on unscheduled acute care in hospitals by avoiding admissions and accelerating discharge
• Consistent evidence of lower costs compared to in patient care.

What we do

Examples of impact so far:

New services

• East Dunbartonshire have launched their adult H@H service and started seeing patients.
• NHS Tayside has established Scotland’s first AHP-led neonatal H@H service, bringing specialist AHP support into the home and creating a more integrated model of neonatal care for babies and families.

Expanding services

• NHS Borders has expanded to 100% geographical cover with their adult services hub and spoke model.
• NHS Lanarkshire have expanded to Cambuslang and Rutherglen areas, enabling more people to access adult H@H services.
• NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s neonatal service has seen over 200 babies since November 2025 and expanding its catchment area from 15 to 20 miles from Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.

More people accessing support

Public Health Scotland (PHS) released their quarterly H@H report. Key findings:

• More than 7,500 patients were accepted into H@H services
• 65% of patients were cared for by older people’s/acute adult H@H services.

The full publication can be found on the PHS website.

Improved care experience

“As parents, you want your child to receive the very best clinical care. H@H has given us that while allowing him to recover where he feels happiest – at home”
Parent of the first child in NHS Lanarkshire to complete treatment through the paediatric H@H service.

For more information on this patient story, please visit this HIS news story.

This has been achieved by:

Supporting 13 NHS Boards

We are working with services across 13 NHS boards to:

• create new services,
• improve the resilience of exisiting services, and
• evaluate new ways of working.

There are 14 adult H@H services and four active neonatal and paediatric H@H services participating in the programme.

Sharing learning between services

• A neonatal and paediatric in-person event took place, which received an average usefulness rating of 4.8/5. Attendees valued the opportunity to network, collaborate and share learning.
• A virtual adult remote and rural network session took place. There is now a dedicated MS teams network channel which includes a contact list of members for easier networking.

Changing referral criteria

NHS Lothian have updated criteria for the Flow Navigation Centre referral pathway. This provides a clearer shared framework for alternatives to admissions, while allowing teams to manager local capacity and clinical risk appropriately.

Capturing patient experience

We surveyed adult H@H services to understand current feedback collection practices, receiving responses from 16 services. Twelve services currently collect feedback, most commonly through paper questionnaires.

Findings have informed our coaching support, and we are helping services implement Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) to strengthen feedback collection.

Mapping neonatal/paediatric services

We contacted all 14 territorial NHS Boards to better understand existing neonatal and paediatric outreach across Scotland

The findings highlighted a strong foundation of home-based care for babies, children and young people.

A summary of the findings can be found in our annual report available on the HIS website.

Participating in cross-site visits

HIS staff and representatives from eight health boards attended a H@H site visit at Forth Valley.

The visit showcased multidisciplinary working, including OPAT, respiratory pathways and prescribing approaches.

Participant feedback was positive, with 100% finding the event useful and valuing the shared learning, discussions and networking opportunities.

HIS Feedback

“The help and assistance from HIS has been invaluable to us setting up and establishing our H@H service.“
Feedback from Forth Valley site visit.

What’s next?

• 4 August 2026 – The publication of H@H annual report 2025/26. This can be found on the HIS website.
• 9 September 2026 – Neonatal and Paediatric virtual learning session.
• 29 September 2026 – National Adult H@H in-person event at COSLA, Edinburgh.
• 4 November 2026 – National Neonatal and Paediatrics H@H in-person event at the Studio, Glasgow.
• 17 March 2027 – Joint Neonatal, Paediatric and Adult National H@H in-person event at Murrayfield, Edinburgh.