Withdrawn study - As part of this project, we planned:
- a state of affairs regarding hospital at home care in Belgium;
- a comparison between the cost of hospital at home care and conventional hospital care from the point of view of the patient, the care provider (hospital and home care nurses) and RIZIV/INAMI;
- a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of hospital at home care in Belgium.
During an exploratory phase, we examined the following aspects:
- Data availability: it appears that the administrative data currently available are insufficient to provide a reliable answer to the research questions. An alternative scenario in which primary data would be collected through surveys would require much more work, while the informative value of such an approach is uncertain.
- Financing: the preferred method would be activity-based costing. However, this requires a great deal of time and resources, and is also less suitable for services that are not (extensively) standardised. Another option would be to carry out surveys, but such an approach would pose difficulties (voluntary participation).
- SWOT analysis: drawing up an exhaustive table of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with hospital at home in Belgium would require a considerable investment of time and other resources, particularly given the variability of care provision in this field.
In view of these difficulties, which are likely to compromise the robustness of the study, and given that several Belgian hospitals have only just or not yet started developing their hospital at home offer, we decided to stop this study after the exploratory phase.
