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If you want to know what are the 5 things that Intensive Care at Home can do that no ICU and no intensive care unit can offer, stay tuned. I’ve got news for you.
Hi, my name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com. Today, I want to talk about the 5 things that Intensive Care at Home can do that no ICU and no intensive care unit can offer. Let’s dive right into it.
Number 1, we are the only provider that actually sends CCRNs (Critical Care Registered Nurses) into the home to manage long-term ventilation with tracheostomy for adults and children. We’re also the only provider that can send CCRNs into the home to manage home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation without tracheostomy. We’re also the only provider that can send CCRNs at home when it comes to tracheostomy management, 24 hours a day, without ventilation. Also, Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV potassium infusion, home IV magnesium infusion, and also home palliative care. We’re also managing central line, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) lines, Hickman’s lines, as well as port access at home.
We are also sending critical care nurses into the home for emergency department bypass services. So, that’s the first thing that no intensive care unit or ICU can offer.
Number 2, the other thing that only Intensive Care at Home can offer, and no ICU or intensive care unit can offer is actually community access for an intensive care patient. All of our clients at home that otherwise without our service would be in intensive care, do have community access, that means they regularly go out in the community.
Picture that and compare that to an intensive care bed. No patients in intensive care do have community access on a regular basis. If at all, the limitations are stopping in that intensive care bed or the limitations are confined to that intensive care bed or intensive care cubicle. Contrast that to Intensive Care at Home where our clients, all of our clients have regular community access with critical care nurses, 24 hours a day.
Number 3, Intensive Care at Home can actually offer quality of life and quality of end-of-life for our clients. Once again, I argue after having worked in critical care for nearly 25 years in three different countries in intensive care as well as in Intensive Care at Home, no intensive care unit can offer quality of life or quality of end of life. If anything, it’s actually appalling, which is why I started Intensive Care at Home because those are exactly the things that we can offer quality of life and quality of end-of-life for our adult and pediatric clients at home.
Number 4, what Intensive Care at Home can offer that no ICU and intensive care unit can offer is actually quality time with family. Now, anyone that’s worked in an intensive care unit or anyone that has had a family member in intensive care knows there’s no quality time for families in intensive care but there’s plenty of quality time for families with Intensive Care at Home because intensive care is coming into people’s homes, which means there’s lots of quality time and care can be structured around what a client and their family wants and needs.
Number 5, another thing that Intensive Care at Home can do that no ICU can offer is long-term job satisfaction for CCRNs. Our staff turnover is very minimal. Most ICUs benchmark is having staff turnover less than 17%. Now, our staff turnover is much less than that. I’d say, it’s probably around the 5% mark. It’s just the natural attrition.
So, I think it’s fair to say that we have a great nursing workforce, but also a great admin workforce that enjoy working for us and they’re self-selected. They have chosen to work for Intensive Care at Home. They resonate with our mission vision and our philosophy. They resonate and want to be part of our clients and their families’ lives. They want to make a big difference to our clients and their families’ lives, and they’re very committed once again to our mission, vision, and philosophy.
I argue most ICUs have a high staff turnover because CCRNs are not satisfied, too political. Whereas you come to us, the client is the focus and it’s all client driven.
I have a bonus for you because you stayed right until the end. What Intensive Care at Home can also offer now is home X-rays. Now, we don’t offer that as a company. However, we are working together with Mobile Radiology. Big shout out to Michael Montalto, the Medical Director and his team and also Simon Shay. They have created a fantastic service where they are now offering and providing home X-rays including home chest X-rays, abdominal X-rays, whatever is needed. Again, an ED admission is not needed because we can do the home X-ray. That is fantastic. It’s amazing.
It just goes to show that other organizations think outside of the box as well and make sure that people even very vulnerable people can stay at home in the comfort of their own home without needing to go back to ED or to ICU. Once again, it’s all about making it a win-win situation.
Now, with Intensive Care at Home, we are currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities as well as in all regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider all around Australia, we are TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved and WorkSafe approved in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, and NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), and DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) all around the country. Our clients and, we as a provider, have also received funding through public hospitals, private health funds, as well as departments of health.
We are the only service provider in 2024 that has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. We have achieved that accreditation since 2012. No other provider has therefore created that much intellectual Intensive Care at Home property or Intensive Care at Home nursing than we have. We are therefore also in a position to employ hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience in the community combined.
We are also the only service provider that actually provides evidence-based care in the community. Check out our Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines on our website at intensivecareathome.com and those Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines are evidence-based.
If you’re at home already and you realize that your setup at home on a ventilator, tracheostomy, BIPAP, CPAP, home TPN, whatever the case may be, and you realize this setup isn’t working and is even dangerous, and that your current team, if you have one who is not having the skills, expertise, mindset, or your provider doesn’t have the accreditation and the knowledge and the skill to keep you at home predictably and safely, please reach out to us so we can help you to keep you home predictably.
I’ll give you a case study so that you can understand what I’m referring to. Our very first client over 10 years ago was a client who was at home on a ventilator with the tracheostomy, C1 spinal injury. He was going back to ICU all the time because he had a team of support workers, basically trying to do intensive care nursing work, and of course, he ended up in ICU all the time. His life was at danger because they couldn’t manage him at home predictably because they didn’t have any ICU nursing skills. So, lo and behold, the client reached out to us eventually and we proved our concept there in no time and while we were working with him, he never ever went back to ICU.
So therefore, we can do the same for you if you’re in a similar situation or if you want to escalate your help, if you want to elevate your funding, we can help you with that because we’ve been involved in the advocacy for our clients from Day 1. Because we’ve been involved in the advocacy from Day 1 successfully, we have a very good understanding what needs to happen to elevate funding, get funding for 24-hour nursing care at home, and so forth.
That’s also why we are providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination. We’re also providing TAC case management in Victoria, once again, helping our clients with the right level of funding for Intensive Care at Home.
If you’re an NDIS Support Coordinator watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, please reach out to us as well. If you’re looking for funding for more nursing care for your participants and you don’t know how to go about it and what evidence to provide, I encourage you to reach out to us. We can help you with the advocacy and with the evidence. We provide NDIS specialist nursing assessments as well done by our critical care nurses and some of them have a legal nurse consulting background.
If you’re a critical care nurse and you’re watching this and you’re looking for a career change, we’re currently offering jobs for critical care nurses in the home in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, in Albury, Wodonga, in Bendigo, in Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Victoria, and in Geelong in Victoria. If you have worked in critical care for a minimum of two years, pediatric ICU, ED, and you have already completed a postgraduate critical care nursing qualification, we will be delighted to hear from you.
I have a disclaimer though because we are offering a tailor-made solution for our clients, which includes regular staff, our clients want to have the same staff coming over and over again because they’re so vulnerable and so special. It’s all about building those critical relationships with our clients and with our team members and having regular and stable teams.
That means if you’re looking for agency work where you can come and go, this is probably not the right fit for you on a long-term basis because our clients want and need regular and the same staff coming over and over again. So, it’s all about building relationships and nurturing them.
If you’re an intensive care specialist or an ED specialist, we also want to hear from you. We are currently expanding our medical team as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED for your long-term patients or for your regularly admitting patients in your ICUs or ED.
With our critical care nursing team at home, we are here to help you take the pressure off your ICU and ED beds and in most cases, you won’t even pay for it. But even if you do pay for it, we cut the cost of an ICU bed by 50% and we’re saving roughly $2,000 per ED admission.
If you’re in the U.S. in the U.K. and you’re watching this and you need help, we want to hear from you as well. We can help you there privately.
Once again, our website is intensivecareathome.com. Call us and one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].
If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families with Intensive Care at Home and intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, share this video with your friends and families, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have from this video.
Thank you so much for watching.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com and I will talk to you in a few days.
Take care for now.