Assessing the Prevalence and Impact of Allied Health Disciplines in Hospital in the Home Services: A Scoping Review

Importance Hospital in the Home (HITH) is a model that delivers inpatient-level care within the patient’s home, substituting bricks-and-mortar hospital bed occupancy and the associated costs. HITH models have rapidly expanded internationally throughout the past five years. With this expansion, it is integral to understand how allied health professionals are represented in HITH and how development of the allied health workforce is occurring. Objective To assess the reported prevalence in available literature of allied health professionals within acute HITH services. Secondarily, to outline the scope and role of any frequently described allied health professionals within these services. Data Sources Six database sources were used: Proquest, Scopus, Embase, CINAHL, Emcare and Medline. Study Selection Searches were conducted and imported into Covidence. The title and abstract reviews were completed utilising a double review and consensus checking process. Full text review and final data extraction was completed via the same method. Conflicts were resolved. Data Extraction and Synthesis A standardised data extraction template was developed. The template accounted for a range of data sets, which was tabulated with accompanying narrative summaries. Outcome The review yielded 1037 references. Titles and abstracts (n=786) were screened, full text review (n=65) was completed, with exclusion reason provided for removed sources (n=53). The remaining articles (n=12) were then assessed and data extraction was completed. Results Physiotherapy (n=5) and pharmacy (n=5) were the most represented disciplines, with social work (n=3) next most frequent. Occupational therapy, dietetics and psychology appeared once each, whilst speech pathology was not referenced. Conclusion This review has successfully reported on the prevalence of allied health professionals within HITH services, as reflected in the available literature. The extent and scope of the role for each of the allied health disciplines is reflected to differing degrees, with concrete conclusions regarding their roles in HITH unable to be drawn.