Hospital@Home: How Hospital-Level Care Can Be Delivered at Home

Hospital@Home is not intended to replace hospitals, but to complement them for suitable patients. They receive hospital-level care at home, supported by technologies such as telemedicine, remote monitoring and sensor systems.

One key figure from the discussion: According to the experts, around 10 percent of patients could already be treated in this way today. In the longer term, this figure could rise to 20 to 25 percent. Medical criteria are not the only consideration: psychosocial factors also play an important role.

Daniela Gutschi, Salzburg State Councillor, sums it up: “Nobody likes being in hospital. With Hospital@Home, patients can receive hospital-level care in their own homes. They can recover in familiar surroundings and maintain their daily routines. Now we need the right framework conditions to turn individual projects into standard care.”

Key Learnings from the Discussion

Hospital@Home offers considerable potential – but the workshop also highlighted several areas where action is still needed before the model can be implemented more widely in Austria:

• Clarify funding and liability: Who pays for care at home, and who is responsible if something goes wrong?
• Consider staffing and collaboration: Hospital@Home requires additional human resources. Hospital physicians, primary care providers, nursing organisations, health insurance providers, policymakers and professional associations need to work closely together.
• Bring patients on board: Communication and health literacy are essential. Patients need to know about the model, understand how it works and trust it.
• Relieve pressure on the healthcare system: Hospital@Home can reduce the need for acute-care beds, improve treatment outcomes and enable new working models.
• An important piece of the puzzle: The discussion identified Hospital@Home as an important component in the further development of the healthcare system. A potential cost-saving effect of 10 to 20 percent across the healthcare system was also mentioned.

What Austria Can Learn from Switzerland

Gregory Fretz shared practical insights from the experience with Hospital@Home in Chur, Switzerland. One important learning: communication plays a crucial role in gaining acceptance. After the health insurance provider promoted the model, patients showed interest in using the service.

The example also demonstrates why pilot projects matter: They can make the benefits of the model tangible and help identify the medical, organisational and financial framework conditions required for implementation.

Salzburg as a Potential Model Region

One outcome of the discussion is particularly relevant for Salzburg: The region positioned itself as a potential model region for a Hospital@Home pilot project. Such a pilot could explore how hospitals, primary and outpatient care, nursing services, technology providers, research institutions and other stakeholders can work together in practice – and which conditions are needed to move from individual projects towards standard care in the long term.

Experts from Healthcare, Research and Policy in Dialogue

Innovation Salzburg organised the workshop “Hospital@Home: When the Hospital Comes to the Patient” together with Salzburg Research and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) on 10 September 2026 as part of Technology Talks Austria at MuseumsQuartier Vienna.

The panel brought together Katharina Reich, Head of Section VII – Public Health at the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection; Daniela Gutschi, Salzburg State Councillor; Gregory Fretz, Senior Physician and Hospital@Home Project Lead at Kantonsspital Graubünden in Chur; Thomas Gamsjäger, Managing Director of Salzburger Landeskliniken; and Franz Feichtner, Director Health at JOANNEUM RESEARCH. The discussion was moderated by Köksal Baltaci from “Die Presse”.