Hospital in the Home Physiotherapy helping more children and families access care at home

For children and young people with chronic illness, travelling to and from Perth Children’s Hospital can be exhausting and disruptive to family life.

Hospital in the Home (HiTH) is a home-visiting service providing acute care and clinical intervention for children who would otherwise be hospital inpatients.

The service helps bridge the gap between home and hospital for safe, patient-focused care.

HiTH has historically provided face-to-face, acute physiotherapy interventions for patients with cystic fibrosis, however earlier this year a 12-month trial commenced to support children with other chronic respiratory conditions such as bronchiectasis, chronic suppurative lung disease, chronic wet cough, and primary ciliary dyskinesia.

For the families receiving physiotherapy in the home, 100% have scored the quality of care as either “very good” or “good”, and that they are highly likely to recommend the service to others.

In the first 6 months of this pilot, 28 children were referred to HiTH for physiotherapy care.

Brothers Hunter and Ronan were the first 2 patients to access the new planned admission to HiTH pathway.

Senior Physiotherapist Cloe Benz says it has been great to have both brothers accessing treatment at the same time and reducing the family’s burden of care of being admitted as inpatients.

Initial results for the HiTH Physiotherapy trial show that the average in-hospital length of stay for respiratory patients has reduced, with 309 in-hospital bed days being saved in the first 6 months of the trial.

For more information about HiTH services for your child please speak to your treating health professional.