After receiving “very good feedback”, the Bermuda Health Council is looking at what other services can be added to the Home Medical Services benefit.

“The future is very optimistic because what we’ve been able to see, and based on the feedback we’ve had from patients so far, and even the physicians who refer patients to this, we’ve received very good feedback, positive feedback,” said Tawanna Wedderburn, the new chief executive of the Bermuda Health Council (BHeC).

“As a result, we would be looking to expand the procedures that can be done in the home setting. That’s work we’ll be undertaking in the next fiscal year.”

The Home Medical Services benefit, which allows patients to receive certain medical procedures at home, was started in October 2013.

“The physician determines whether or not the care the patient can receive in the home is appropriate for whatever their condition is,” Ms Wedderburn said, adding that the procedures are carried out by skilled nurses.

“As we know, there are some settings that help us to recover from our conditions in a more suitable way and being in the home environment allows people to be comfortable as they are healing,” she said.

“We want to make sure that whatever benefits are added can be performed safely in the home with no risks to patients.”

According to health economist Ricky Brathwaite, home medical services have saved the healthcare system $437,520 between April 2014 and March 2015, although this figure does not include the estimated savings from peritoneal dialysis.

“Home Medical Services is shown to really fit into where our community is going and what our community needs,” Dr Brathwaite said. “We’ve been very pleased with how Home Medical Services have integrated into our system.”

He said BHeC was also looking to expand the benefit because “the changing dynamic of the population calls for us to do something different”.

Dr Brathwaite said one of the reasons it was integrated was because BHeC was looking at the benefits of a decentralised healthcare system.

“Within our healthcare system, the hospital has always been seen as a hub for healthcare, which is great because, by and large, we have one of the best hospitals when it comes to jurisdictions that are comparable to ours,” he said.

But he added that a lot of services were being “pushed to be done at the hospital”.

“The approach in the pilot of the Home Medical Services for Bermuda was a way to empirically say, how can we transfer services that were done in a centralised manner at the hospital and allow qualified professionals within the community to do them without losing quality and within an environment where you don’t have as many overhead costs that need to be tacked on to those services?”

According to a spokeswoman for the Bermuda Hospitals Board, the cost for home care is “usually” lower because these patients were “often less sick” and do not require acute care or treatment.