Hospital at Home Programme – November 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
Optimise and expand H@H services:
Supporting NHS boards/HSCPs to optimise and expand their neonatal, paediatric, adult and OPAT H@H services.
Develop new H@H services:
Supporting the implementation of new neonatal, paediatric, adult and OPAT services across Scotland, including remote and rural areas.
National Learning System:
Enable neonatal, paediatric, adult and OPAT H@H services to share and learn from each other.
National Infrastructure:
Develop national infrastructure to enable sustainable neonatal, paediatric, adult and OPAT H@H services.
Examples of impact so far
12% more people accessing support
Public Health Scotland released their quarterly H@H report.
Key findings:
- More than 8,400 patients were accepted into H@H services. This is a 12% increase since the last report.
Read the full Public Health Scotland quarterly report.
Expanding services
- NHS Forth Valley expanded the capacity of their adult respiratory and OPAT services. The monthly number of patients increased by 27% from Q1 to Q2.
- NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde paediatric H@H have increased their capacity enabling more children to avoid spending time in hospital. The monthly number of admissions increased by 25% from Q1 to Q2.
- NHS Grampian adult H@H expanded further into Aberdeenshire with people living in Inverurie now able to access the service.
- NHS Shetland have increased admission alternative referrals to their adult H@H service through work with their frailty at the front door pathway.
New pathways
- NHS Lanarkshire paediatric H@H have approved pathways to support children with new diagnosis of type 1 diabetes and febrile infants under 3 months.
- NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde neonatal H@H launched a pathway to care for babies on oral antibiotics. Five babies and their families have been supported since this launched in September.
- NHS Fife adult H@H have successfully tested and implemented a respiratory pathway. This offers H@H care with respiratory team support.
Improved care experience
“[H@H] enabled us to keep our mum at home with us, where we could spend time with her and talk to her, which just would not have been possible in an acute setting, for which myself and my family will be forever grateful“
Daughter of patient being cared for by Ayrshire adult H@H service.
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 with H@H services
The National Adult H@H event in September brought together adult services across Scotland and guests from Northern Ireland looking to learn from our programme. The agenda focused on data and evaluation including:
- Using patient, carer and staff experience to inform decision making
- Using data to support improvement
- Demonstrating service impacts on the wider system, including improving flow
Resources from the event can be found on the H@H community forum.
Participants were asked to describe the event in one work. The most common responses were: informative, interesting, insightful and inspiring.
Launching the OPAT improvement sprint
Eight teams are starting a 10-week improvement sprint for OPAT services and H@H intravenous (IV) medication pathways.
Participants will be supported to:
- Understand challenges and identify opportunities for improvement
- Test changes to improve access, quality and safety
- Contribute to H@H expansion over the winter
Areas of focus include understanding demand/capacity and increasing referrals.
Discussing neonatal and paediatric work
The neonatal and paediatric H@H virtual learning session in September focussed on the results of work to map services delivered at home.
Participants took part in focused group discussions around the findings and what should be included H@H and H@H+ definitions. The session was rated an average of 4.2/5 in evaluation.
Engaging with the public
The H@H in Scotland evaluation: phase 1 findings report found strong support for H@H services, with staff recognising benefits for patient care and service delivery. The report highlights opportunities to improve consistency, staffing, referral processes, and infrastructure across Scotland. The report found that 44% of people would choose H@H over a stay in hospital.
For more details, read the full report on Scottish Government’s website.
Reporting progress for 2025/26
The annual report was published in August and provides evidence of the programme’s impact on H@H services, including:
- Progress in expanding services to new localities, disease pathways, and neonatal and paediatric populations.
- Examples of delivering improvement support and promoting shared learning and best practice.
- An overview of how national programme objectives were delivered to support services with implementation, measurement and evaluation.
Read the Hospital at Home services annual report: August 2026.
What’s next?
- 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.