Legislation would test delivering skilled nursing and intensive rehabilitation services at home, building on the success of Hospital at Home to expand options for older Americans.
WASHINGTON, D.C. —Representatives Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) are leading the charge to expand available healthcare services at home with the introduction of the BRIDGE Care at Home Act. This legislation will test providing skilled nursing and intensive rehabilitation services in the home as an alternative to traditional facility-based care.
Building on lessons learned from Hospital at Home, the legislation would create new opportunities to evaluate whether eligible Medicare beneficiaries can safely receive skilled nursing and rehabilitation services in the comfort of their homes, while measuring impact on readmissions, patients’ functional status and satisfaction, and costs of providing skilled nursing facility care in a patient’s home with those of inpatient skilled nursing facility care. The approach would offer patients greater choice in where they recover, support family caregivers, and create new opportunities for health care professionals to deliver care outside institutional settings.
“Hospital at home demonstrated that seniors can be treated at home safely and effectively. The BRIDGE Care at Home Act would further expand the options for home-based care, thereby giving patients choice, supporting caregivers and giving providers an alternative to working in an institutional setting. If we truly want senior to age in place, we need more in-home care options.” Krista Drobac, Founder, Moving Health Home
Advances in home-based care, including remote patient monitoring, in-person clinical services, and coordinated rehabilitation, are creating new opportunities to deliver higher-acuity care safely outside traditional facilities. At the same time, the nation’s post-acute care system faces growing capacity challenges. Between 2019 and 2024, operating capacity at skilled nursing facilities declined by at least 5%, with one-quarter of U.S. counties experiencing declines exceeding 15%. These pressures will only intensify as the population ages, with the number of Americans aged 65 and older projected to grow from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050. Expanding access to skilled nursing and rehabilitation services at home offers an opportunity to meet growing demand, ease pressure on institutional care settings, and give older Americans more choices in where they recover.
The BRIDGE Care at Home Act represents an important step toward modernizing Medicare to better reflect how patients want to receive care and how providers can deliver it. By expanding options for home-based recovery, the legislation has the potential to improve the patient experience, support family caregivers, and reduce avoidable reliance on institutional services.
Additional information can be found in the One-Pager, Supplementary Materials.
“The BRIDGE Care at Home Act offers a new opportunity for more patients to recover in the comfort of their own homes instead of a skilled nursing facility, particularly when their needs extend beyond traditional home health services. This is an opportunity to better align patient-centered care, experience, and outcomes by leveraging evolving technology and pairing it with what caregivers do best – caring for patients.”
“SNF-level rehab in the home environment allows patients to rebuild functional independence directly in the spaces where they actually live. Patients sleep better, move more, and face lower risks of delirium and nosocomial complications when their acute recovery happens at home. Advanced recovery without the hospital walls: better rest, fewer complications, and real-life rehab in the comfort of your own home.”
“Our Home Recovery Care Plus has proven that patients can safely receive skilled nursing and rehabilitation services at home, with strong outcomes and high satisfaction. By combining in-person nursing and therapy, physician oversight, remote monitoring, and coordinated care, we help patients recover in the comfort of their homes while reducing unnecessary facility stays and the costs associated with institutional care. BRIDGE Care at Home builds on what is already working-giving patients more choice in where they recover, avoiding unnecessary institutional stays, and lowering health care costs.”
About Moving Health Home
Moving Health Home is a coalition of health care organizations working to make the home a more widely available and sustainable clinical site of care. The coalition advocates for federal policies that expand access to home-based care, support innovation, and improve outcomes for patients and families.
