Table 1 Categories of components used to define inpatient-level care at home models
Components | Categories | Definitions or comments |
|---|---|---|
(1) Clinical activities | General inpatient-level care | General inpatient-level care activities delivered by health professionals based in hospitals, and/or communities, without care activities delivered by allied health professionals. This includes sole activity or treatment delivered such as IV antibiotics at home by hospital outreach nurses |
Extended multidisciplinary inpatient-level care | As for general in-patient level care but with additional activities delivered by allied health professionals such as physiotherapists-, occupational, speech therapy, social worker’s support | |
(2) Workforce | Hospital or community-based health professionals | This category refers to health professionals from either hospital or community settings but not both. This means either community-based clinicians such as general practices, community nurses, and/or communities-based allied health professionals; or hospital-based clinicians including doctors, ward nurses, and/or allied health professionals |
Hospital and community-based health professionals | This category refers to clinicians and/or allied health professionals from both hospitals and communities | |
(3) Technology involvement | Low-intensity technology involvement | This refers to a low-level involvement of technology for a specific purpose. We defined this as use of telephone, and/or teleconferencing for communication alone |
High-intensity technology involvement | Use of devices/ technologies such as apps, wearables, digital medical devices, with or without low-intensity-level technologies for multiple purposes at least including communication and remote monitoring. This could include computer stations and fully equipped home-based technology kits that can automatically record health data via a digital platform/ dashboard for communication and continuous monitoring |