Becker’s: Dr. Hemali Sudhalkar on the present and future of advanced care at home

At the recent Becker’s Digital Innovation + Patient Experience and Marketing virtual event, Hemali Sudhalkar, MD, national medical director of strategy for Kaiser Permanente Care at Home, joined industry experts to discuss the present and future of advanced care at home programs. As traditional brick-and-mortar care makes way for innovative, patient-centered models, Dr. Sudhalkar talked about what it takes to launch a program that works.  

Keys to success

For Dr. Sudhalkar, success begins with alignment. “In a value-based system like ours, incentives are aligned to improve care and outcomes,” she said. That alignment enables significant investment in innovations that bring high-quality care directly into patients’ homes.

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Dr. Sudhalkar also points to three keys that helped Kaiser Permanente’s program emerge as a powerful model for improving quality, patient experience, and physician engagement. First is infrastructure. “If you don’t scale, you will fail,” she said, emphasizing the need to invest in both people and structure to ensure program growth. Second is communication and culture change. Educating patients and families about advanced care at home is essential, but so too is engaging physicians and clinicians. “We’re asking [physicians and care teams] to deliver care in a very different setting than they’ve known,” she explains. The third key is flexibility. Unlike traditional hospitals, where change can be harder and slower to implement, home-based programs must be willing to evolve, adapt, and innovate at a faster rate. 

Challenges and the road ahead

Dr. Sudhalkar is candid about the obstacles that remain, including regulatory instability and payment model uncertainty. Another concern is lingering cultural resistance among some physicians and clinicians, but for others — especially those experiencing burnout — advanced care at home provides a meaningful new way to practice medicine. They gain a deeper understanding of patients’ daily lives — what they eat, the medications and supplements they use, and the environment that shapes their health. That insight supports a truly holistic approach to care.  

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Patients, meanwhile, overwhelmingly embrace the model. “How cool for patients to be in their own bed, with their own pets, surrounded by comfort,” Dr. Sudhalkar says. Survey results confirm this: advanced care at home care scores at least 10 points higher than traditional brick-and-mortar hospital settings on patient experience. 

Looking ahead, Dr. Sudhalkar envisions a fundamental shift in the hospital landscape. “In the next five to 10 years, hospitals will be primarily emergency rooms, operating rooms, and ICUs,” she predicts. “[Advanced care at home] is the future of health care. Our patients love it, and with the right investment and advocacy, it will become a central part of how we deliver care.”