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Hospitals warn of unusual congestion: "Add hundreds of home hospital beds - already in the current wave" | Israel today

2022-01-12T10:59:20.445Z


Against the background of the expected congestion in the hospitals due to the spread of the omicron, Beilinson Hospital CEO calls for increased home hospitalizations • "When a patient lies in bed and eats home-made food, it contributes to recovery and saves him risk of hospital infections" • Currently only 5% of patients Hospitalized in their home


Is it possible to create hundreds more places of hospitalization by using the hospital hospitalization model?

A home hospitalization model done at Beilinson Hospital allows the hospital to increase its internal ward occupancy and adds another “ward,” in which patients are hospitalized at home and receive treatment at the hospital.

The Beilinson Medical Center calls on the Ministry of Health to adopt the model and thus increase the hospitalization capacity of the hospitals by hundreds of beds, up to about 600, in light of the shortage of hospitalization.

Currently, only 5% of HMO patients who need hospitalization use in-home hospitalization, which is far from realizing its potential.

Home hospitalization is intended for a variety of medical conditions that the Ministry of Health has approved and defined.

It is intended for patients who have a family member or caregiver who can support and assist in treatment, and is mainly given to people suffering from conditions such as pneumonia, urinary tract infection, heart failure, skin infection and other background diseases that require medication, continuous intravenous treatment or medical follow-up.

The Beilinson Home Hospital Service has been operating since October.

It treated 150 people, the youngest of whom is 18 years old and the oldest 101. These days, the service is being expanded to include 30 patients at a time.

Home kit for the hospitalized

"We operate a home hospitalization unit with the hospital's medical and nursing staff, in which a nurse comes to the patient's home every day. A doctor's visit also takes place once a day, digitally or physically," explains Dr. Eran Rotman, director of Beilinson Hospital. "I provide laboratory tests and support 24/7 for the benefit of the patients. If a patient needs an ultrasound or CT, make an appointment for an examination and he returns home. We make all the consulting doctors available for each patient. Each patient receives a kit that includes a thermometer, a thermometer .

Some of the inpatients come to the service through Beilinson's emergency room.

Others were hospitalized for a day or two in the inpatient ward and were released for further hospitalization at home.

An examination of accepted medical indices found that these were patients whose level of complexity was the same as that of patients in the ward.

The solution of home hospitalization is not new.

Home hospitalization is already taking place today at Sheba Hospital, which operates a service called Sheba BEYOND for home hospitalization. However, the Ministry of Health does not approve of the fact that the hospital charges for the service.

Since the fourth Corona wave, the Ministry of Health has been encouraging HMOs and encouraging them to hospitalize patients, but the service is not gaining momentum.

A total of 1,337 corona patients have been hospitalized in the hospital since the fourth wave, of which about 5% (75 patients) were transferred to hospital for further treatment.

These data are an indication of the effectiveness of home care.

Entire class - at home

As of this week, there were 71 corona patients in home hospitalization in the health funds, which is about 11% of the 609 corona patients currently hospitalized in the hospitals.

HMOs have in recent months hospitalized 5,388 patients (not Corona patients) in home hospitalization, and as of this week there were 237 patients in this setting.

Dr. Rotman believes that this is a feasible solution to the hospitalization crisis that accompanies the corona wave alongside the flu wave:

"When a patient lies in his bed and eats the food that his family has prepared - it contributes to recovery, and also saves him the risk of acquired infections in hospitals."

Dr. Eran Rotman, Photo: Oren Cohen

Dr. Rotman added: “We are preparing for the hospitalization of 30 patients at a time, it is almost an entire internal ward that is at home. This does not come at the expense of the HMOs' home hospitalization, but rather expands the possibility to more patients. If every hospital in the State of Israel develops an order of magnitude of 20 hospital beds at home, it will be a multiplication of hundreds of hospital beds that will alleviate the existing distress in hospitals. It's a win-win for everyone. From my knowledge of the needs for such a move, it can be implemented in a relatively rapid organization already in the current corona wave. "

The State Comptroller's report from September on the state's response to the corona virus recommended that this possibility be expanded. 2.5 in 2020, the year of the corona, compared to the year 2019) ", the comptroller wrote in the report and signed:" It is recommended that the Ministry of Health insist on how the hospitalization of the home can be expanded. "

Dr. Itamar Ofer, president and chairman of Sabar Medicine, which operates a home hospitalization service for health funds, told Israel Today: "Despite the State Comptroller's recommendation, the Ministry of Health has not realized its full potential in home hospitalization. "Only 5% of the patients who need hospitalization are hospitalized, while the potential is several times greater."

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Source: israelhayom

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