“Knowing that I have hospital at home as an option makes me more willing to seek care.”
Being diagnosed with a rare condition often means becoming intimately familiar with advanced medical care, and 30-year-old Meredith, diagnosed with a condition known as nutcracker syndrome, is no stranger to hospital visits.
To treat complications from the condition, Meredith underwent a procedure at Mount Sinai Health System in New York called renal auto-transplant in early 2025. “It was a very complex, almost 7-hour-long surgery, very rarely performed in the U.S.,” she explains.
Following the surgery, her recovery process was a bit rocky. “After surgery, unfortunately I had a lot of complications and was infection-prone,” Meredith shares. Three trips to the emergency department (ED) in the weeks after her procedure meant three hospital admissions, away from the comfort of home, her boyfriend and her two cats. “I’m very attached to my cats. It’s a big quality of life thing to be around them, and to be around my boyfriend and not have to wait for him to come see me during visiting hours.”
Unfortunately, a fourth trip to the ED for vomiting and difficulty urinating brought disappointing news again: she needed another admission. “I was emotionally very distressed and anxious,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to be in the hospital for another week. They told me they wanted to admit me for IV antibiotics for six days, and I broke down crying because I don’t want to live my life this way where I’m in the hospital for a week out of every month.”
An innovative approach to inpatient-level care
But then came “a light at the end of the tunnel,” as Meredith discovered that Mount Sinai’s ability to offer cutting-edge medical care extended beyond her rare condition and surgery. With the help of the health system’s Hospitalization at Home program, Meredith could return to her familiar home environment for her inpatient care.
“When they told me about hospital at home, it put me in a better mindset immediately,” she shares. “I thought, omigosh, I can get the care I so obviously need, but I can also correlate it with feeling the effects of being at home and being with my support system — being with my cats. It made it 100% better.”
Back safe in her home with the support of the hospital-at-home team, healthcare-savvy Meredith was impressed. “It went really well. I was blown away by how fast everything was. I got home from the hospital and within the hour my supplies were delivered, and within two hours of being home I had already seen a nurse — they had already visited and set everything up for me.”
Although she felt a little nervous about whether she might have to return to the hospital if her condition continued to worsen, Meredith says she found the team to be well-equipped despite her unique diagnosis. “They were very competent, and they treated everything with urgency. They were very holistic about incorporating all the diagnoses, not just the acute diagnosis that put me in the hospital. If they didn’t know something, they clarified with me or my medical team. It made me feel very confident in the care.”
Care that goes above and beyond
Given the more complex nature of her care, Meredith notes that receiving care at home didn’t mean a lack of access to advanced treatment. Unsure whether she should take a medication she’d previously been given, “I ended up calling the 24/7 hotline, and they told me to hold it. The nurse and the doctor were really great about collaborating with my team to figure out if I should take it or not. I really appreciated that — they didn’t just tell me, ‘call your doctor and figure it out.’ They did the legwork, and I was able to focus on resting and getting better.”
Asked what she would suggest to anyone unsure of accepting hospital-at-home care, she says, “I understand the hesitation, but the level of care is really what you would receive in the hospital, especially when it comes to needing to contact someone, and there really is someone there for you 24/7 if you end up needing something.”
She also reflects that after her experience with the program, she finds the idea of returning to the hospital to be less intimidating in the future. “Knowing that I have hospital at home as an option makes me more willing to seek care, rather than dragging my feet in packing my ER bag,” she says. “I feel like the care was more personalized, and I felt less rushed. The level of care really exceeded expectations, and that set me up for a great healing environment.”