On 19 May 2023, a Joint Ministerial Decision from the Ministers of Health and Economics was published, concerning the establishment of home health care and hospital at home systems for targeted sensitive groups of patients with chronic disabilities. It provides for home care combined with parallel organized support from health care units for children, adolescents and adults with serious chronic health problems that cause long-term or permanent disabilities.
The aim is to improve the quality of life of patients while freeing up hospital beds and saving resources for the national healthcare system. In particular, this decision concerns patients, children and adults, with different underlying primary disease (chronic respiratory obstructive or restrictive diseases, rapidly or slowly progressive neurological diseases such as motor neuron disease, myasthenia, cystic fibrosis, chronic heart failure and other chronic diseases) and oncology patients who need specialized long-term care and oncology treatment at home.
The patient’s home will be assimilated to the hospital environment, (operating as a place of care), under the terms and conditions provided for the provision of hospital care services at home. The program’s Reference Center is defined as the clinic/hospital department, which provides hospital care at home, to patients who have been treated at the clinic in question or at clinics interconnected with the Reference Center. Patients treated at home can return to the Reference Center or, when this is not possible, to an interconnected structure, at any time, to be treated in case of worsening of their condition.
Hospital at home and health care services are provided by intersectoral – interdisciplinary teams, with the capacity to supervise 100–120 patients per year, which are interconnected with short-day hospitalization departments as well as nursing beds of the Reference Center. According to the decision, a department with at least two free beds available 24 hours a day, every day of the year must be designated for each Reference Center.