Hospital at Home annual report summary: August 2026
This is a summary of the 2025 – 2026 report.
Summary
This report summarises the impact of the national hospital at home programme for the period April 2025 – March 2026, delivered by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland have been delivering a national improvement programme to support hospital at home services since 2019. In line with Scottish Government’s Operational Improvement Plan 2025, we supported the expansion of hospital at home in 2025/26. The expansion included:
- roll out to new localities
- addition of new disease pathways, and
- addition of neonatal and paediatric services to the national programme.
Key information
Definition of hospital at home
Hospital at home is a service that provides acute hospital-level care by healthcare professionals, in a home context, for a condition that would otherwise require acute hospital inpatient care.
Impact of hospital at home
- In 2025/26, over 17,000 people aged over 65 avoided spending time in hospital because of hospital at home services.
- The median number of admissions to older/acute adult hospital at home services per week rose by 27% during 2025/26, to 378 admissions.
- According to national data, 340 babies and children avoided time in hospital between November 2025 and April 2026 due to hospital at home services.
- An estimated £18.8 million in healthcare costs were avoided in 2025/26 because hospital at home admissions cost less than traditional geriatric hospital stays.
- An estimated £44.3 million in healthcare costs were avoided due to reduced healthcare usage in the 6 months following discharge from older/acute adult hospital at home.
2025/26 national programme objectives
The programme objecctives for the 2025/26 period were to:
- share evidence and best practice
- increase the pace of implementation through tailored improvement support
- enable measurement of progress and evaluate impact, and
- facilitate learning and connections both locally and nationally.