Mass General Brigham Launches Clinical Trials Focused on Home Hospital Treatment for Dementia and Behavioral Health Conditions
Innovative trials aim to advance the evidence base for caring for different populations in the home.
Mass General Brigham, a national leader in Home Hospital care innovation, today announced the launch of two new clinical trials designed to expand the evidence base for delivering acute, hospital-level care in the home. The trials focus on patients living with dementia and those experiencing primary behavioral health conditions — two patient populations that often face challenges in traditional hospital settings. Together, these initiatives reinforce Mass General Brigham’s commitment to advancing Home Hospital care and helping shape the future of this care delivery model across the country.
“These trials will help us evaluate whether patients living with dementia and those with primary psychiatric diagnoses can safely receive advanced, hospital-level care in their homes while avoiding many of the challenges associated with traditional hospital-based care,” said David Levine, MD, MPH, MA, Clinical Director of Research & Development at Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home, and lead investigator of both trials. “By generating high-quality evidence, we hope to identify new ways to deliver the right care, in the right place, at the right time to better meet the needs of patients and their families.”
The first study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, will evaluate a novel Home Hospital care pathway for patients living with moderate to severe dementia. It will follow participants over time to enable early intervention with the goal of avoiding emergency department visits and brick-and-mortar hospital admission, which can be traumatic for this patient population. Patients will be randomized to either hospital-based care or home-based care that includes proactive care planning in the home, virtual urgent care supported by mobile integrated health paramedics and direct admission to Mass General Brigham’s Home Hospital when needed. The goal is to reduce the physical and emotional strain of hospital-based care while increasing time spent safely at home, a key outcome of the study. This trial will enroll 200 patients who will be followed for one year.
In parallel, Levine is leading a pilot clinical trial focused on patients presenting with primary behavioral health conditions, including psychosis, depression, anxiety, and behavioral symptoms associated with dementia. Traditionally, these patients are treated in inpatient psychiatric units. This new pilot introduces an alternative: delivering hospital-level psychiatric care in the home through a specialized, multidisciplinary team that includes psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychologists and mental health specialists. This marks the first effort in the country to rigorously test a Home Hospital model for behavioral health care for patients diagnosed with a psychiatric condition in the emergency department. This work is funded by the Thompson Family Foundation. The pilot, which has enrolled all 20 patients, will evaluate feasibility, patient experience and clinical outcomes, with the goal of informing broader adoption if successful.
With one of the largest Home Hospitals in the country, Mass General Brigham continues to study how this model can be expanded safely and effectively to meet the needs of more patients. Last year, this care model was expanded to include oncology patients. Previous research has shown that the Home Hospital care model is safe, effective, and capable of providing care that is equivalent to or better than traditional brick-and-mortar hospital care, while also helping alleviate the capacity challenges faced by hospitals across the state and the country.
“Patients living with dementia and other behavioral health conditions have not had access to a Home Hospital option until now. These trials will help us understand how this innovative model of care can best support these patients and their families,” said Heather O’Sullivan, MS, APRN, President and Chief Operating Officer at Mass General Brigham's Healthcare at Home.
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.