Geisinger at Home offers primary care to populations with chronic or complex conditions

Hospital at home for acute care became one of the lifeline programs for health systems during COVID-19, for providers that had the capacity and resources to take advantage of public health emergency waiver. Hospital at home programs for primary care are rarer and require a combination of factors to be successful for patients and providers. Geisinger in Pennsylvania has the right combination of a population that needs at-home primary care, an integrated health plan and the resources to make the program successful at scale. Geisinger does not have an acute care at home program, but Geisinger at Home got started in 2018 to bring primary care services to patients who have complex or chronic conditions such as heart failure, emphysema or diabetes. Currently, an estimated 2,000 of Geisinger Health Plan's 600,000 members are enrolled. Since 2018, 7,600 patients have taken advantage of the program. Often they're enrolled up to a year or longer.