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Hospitals Approved for Hospital-at-Home
Two health systems have received CMS approval to add new hospitals to their hospital-at-home programs so far in 2026, contributing to the year’s running list of hospital-at-home approvals 2026.
The Federal Waiver Behind These Hospital-at-Home Approvals 2026
The Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver, which lets approved hospitals deliver inpatient-level care to eligible Medicare patients in their homes, was extended through Sept. 30, 2030, as part of a federal spending package signed into law in February. CMS has approved 365 hospital campuses across 137 health systems in 37 states to date.
How This List Is Compiled
Below are the systems that added newly approved hospital-at-home locations in 2026, per Becker’s review of CMS data, organized chronologically by approval month.
January Hospital-at-Home Approvals 2026
Advocate Aurora Medical Center Grafton, Wisconsin, was approved Jan. 15. The hospital joins Charlotte, North Carolina-based Advocate Health’s flagship hospital-at-home program, which launched in March 2020 in the Charlotte market and has since expanded to more than a dozen hospitals in North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Alamance Regional Medical Center Joins Cone Health’s Program
Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington, North Carolina, was approved Jan. 15. Greensboro-based Cone Health marked the first year of its Hospital at Home program in June 2026, reporting zero patient deaths, zero care-associated infections, shorter average lengths of stay and fewer 30-day readmissions compared with traditional inpatient care.
Program Constraints Behind This Round of Hospital-at-Home Approvals 2026
The program has been capped at six patients at a time, in part because most insurers still don’t cover it, though Cone Health said it plans to expand as more payers come on board. This limitation illustrates a common challenge facing hospital-at-home programs nationally: even with strong clinical outcomes, insurer reimbursement often lags behind program capacity and ambition.
April Hospital-at-Home Approvals 2026
Atrium Health Navicent in Macon, Georgia, was approved April 29. Atrium’s program has saved tens of thousands of bed days with a sub-1% mortality rate and a readmission rate better than the system’s brick-and-mortar facilities, according to a presentation reported by Healthcare Innovation.
What These Hospital-at-Home Approvals 2026 Signal for the Program’s Growth
With the underlying federal waiver now extended through 2030, health systems appear to be treating hospital-at-home expansion as a durable, long-term care delivery strategy rather than a temporary pandemic-era accommodation. The consistently positive outcomes reported by both Cone Health and Atrium Health, including lower mortality, fewer infections, and reduced readmissions, may help build the case for broader insurer coverage that program leaders like Cone Health say remains a limiting factor.
A Running List Updated Throughout the Year
This is a running list and will be updated throughout the year as CMS approves new hospitals and health systems, meaning the full scope of hospital-at-home approvals 2026 will continue to grow as additional systems receive authorization.
What This Means for the Future of Hospital-at-Home Care
As more systems join Advocate Health, Cone Health, and Atrium Health in expanding their hospital-at-home footprints, the combination of a decade-long federal waiver extension and consistently strong clinical outcomes data suggests this care model is transitioning from an experimental pilot approach toward a more established part of the acute care landscape. Whether insurer coverage expands quickly enough to match program capacity, as Cone Health hopes, will likely determine how quickly hospital-at-home programs can scale beyond current patient caps in the years ahead.
Why Payer Coverage Remains the Key Bottleneck
Across the systems added to this year’s list, a consistent theme emerges: strong clinical results are not automatically translating into broader payer adoption. While CMS’s own waiver provides a clear reimbursement pathway for eligible Medicare patients, commercial insurers have been slower to build out coverage frameworks for hospital-at-home care, leaving programs like Cone Health’s capped well below what clinical demand or capacity might otherwise support. As more health systems accumulate a full year or more of outcomes data, similar to Cone Health’s and Atrium Health’s reported results, that growing body of evidence may become an increasingly important tool for negotiating expanded coverage with commercial payers, potentially unlocking faster growth for hospital-at-home programs nationwide beyond what Medicare-only reimbursement currently allows.
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