1947

Establishment of Montefiore Home Care Program, first hospital-based back-to-the-home program, i.e., coordinated home care program (CHCP). “By the 1950s, home care programs claimed that even paracenteses, infusions, and blood transfusions were offered at home” (Buhler-Wilkerson, 190). . . . “Most patients were medically indigent, chronically ill, and female. . . . any economic advantages of home care probably derived from the unpaid contribution of family members – primarily women” (191). Most persistent difficulty with the programs was “the antagonism toward home care among visiting house staff. Attending physicians fear that extension of hospital services into homes was a step in the direction of socialized medicine” (191). . . . With the exception of the indigent, the savings from shortened hospital stays – or no hospitalization at all – accrued to the patient or community, not to the hospital or insurance company. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of hospital patients with acute illnesses qualified for home care” (192).