HOUSE CALLS ARE BACK

How HEALTH SYSTEMS are turning LIVING ROOMS into hospital rooms

- by ALEXIS KAYSER

ERICA OLENSKI’S NORTH TEXAS HOME IS A constant churn of activity, as is typical for a family with two young boys. Scattered about are baseball bats, book bags, bicycles. But that's where the ordinary ends.

Olenski’s son, August, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in May of 2019, at 5 months old. For the next six years, their home served as a personal intensive care unit.

Semi-personal, that is. A rotating cast of health care professionals provided 24-hour care for August who, at points during his treatment, required a tra-cheostomy tube to breathe and a gastrostomy tube to eat. Nurses arrived at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. each day. Physical, occupational and speech therapists augmented the team.

There was no name for this care strategy when it was presented to Olenski six years ago. But after the COVID-19 pandemic pushed more health services into nontraditional settings, it has been widely adopted and referred to as “hospital at home.” People with critical illnesses—old and young—have been receiving care in their living rooms that was once unfathomable outside of a medical clinic.

Considering what would be best for August, his family and physicians reached an increasingly popular conclusion: Hospitals aren’t always the best place for healing.

While they offer 24/7 access to medical care and quick response times in an emergency, the unfamiliar setting can have adverse effects on patients’ health. Studies have associated the noises, lights and disruptions of a hospital room with poor sleep and insomnia which can persist even after discharge. And about one in five people have “white coat hypertension,” a condition where blood pressure is normal at home, but spikes in medical settings due to stress, according to research from Harvard Medical School.