Sponsors (9)
The bill continues and studies Medicare Acute Hospital Care at Home—preserving in-home access and generating evidence on quality, cost, and equity—but does so while cutting dedicated improvement funding and extending waivers that raise fiscal and patient-safety risks and delay firm policy conclusions.
Medicare beneficiaries (especially those with chronic conditions) can continue receiving hospital-level acute care at home through Sept. 30, 2030, enabling more in-home treatment and helping hospitals manage bed capacity with reduced regulatory burden.
CMS will study whether Acute Hospital Care at Home delivers comparable quality and outcomes to inpatient care, providing clearer evidence on safety and effectiveness for beneficiaries and policymakers.
Hospitals and CMS will collect cost data on at-home acute care, which can identify opportunities to reduce hospital operating costs and inform payment or efficiency reforms.
Cutting the Medicare Improvement Fund from $2.062 billion to $400.5 million will likely reduce or delay program improvements, shrink provider supports or payments, slow implementation of improvements, and may shift costs onto beneficiaries or taxpayers.
Extending waiver authority through Sept. 30, 2030 reduces regulatory oversight and could raise patient safety risks if safeguards and monitoring are not maintained.
A longer waiver period and broader use of at-home acute care could increase Medicare spending per episode or overall if in-home care proves more costly or is used more widely than inpatient care.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Extends acute hospital care‑at‑home waiver authority to 9/30/2030, funds a required HHS study ($2.5M), and lowers a Medicare Improvement Fund statutory amount to $400.5M for FY2027+.
Official title: Hospital Inpatient Services Modernization Act
Introduced July 10, 2025 by Vernon G. Buchanan · Last progress December 2, 2025
Extends Medicare waiver flexibilities that allow hospitals to provide acute inpatient-level care in patients' homes from January 30, 2026 to September 30, 2030. Requires the HHS Secretary to complete a detailed study comparing outcomes, costs, utilization, patient experience, and equity between traditional inpatient care and the Acute Hospital Care at Home model and report results to congressional tax and finance committees by September 30, 2028. The bill provides $2.5 million to CMS to carry out that study and also reduces the statutory dollar amount available from the Medicare Improvement Fund for services furnished during and after FY2027 from $2,062,000,000 to $400,500,000.