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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term, ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. And where we also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units whilst providing quality services for long-term, ventilated adults and children and medically complex patients at home including Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), Home IV potassium infusions, Home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) as well as IV antibiotics. We also provide palliative care services at home as well as Port Management, Central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, Hickman’s line management.

Now in today’s blog, I do want to talk about how can you make a safe transition from intensive care to a home care environment with a tracheostomy and a PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tube. Now, case in point, we’re currently working with a client who has their loved one in ICU. They have their mother in ICU with the tracheostomy and the PEG tube. And the hospital or the ICU was adamant that she can go home just with the daughter and “train” the daughter to look after her from intensive care, going home.

Now, we advise strictly against that because taking someone from intensive care with the tracheostomy and a PEG tube home and the daughter being the main carer and basically taking over what is happening in an intensive care unit is sheer madness and it jeopardizes lives and people have died because of that. But I’ll come to that later.

So we strictly advised against that. But the hospital and the daughter thought they could give it a shot. We said, well, their mother is either going to die at home or she’s going back into ICU within less than 24-48 hours because she needs intensive care or she needs Intensive Care at Home.

And of course, the mother went home and within less than 24 hours, the daughter had to call an ambulance because her oxygen levels were going down and she ended up back up in ICU just as we predicted, no Intensive Care at Home.

We’ve been in business now for over 10 years plus Intensive Care at Home services have been around in Germany for over 25 years. There’s a proven path to how to set up Intensive Care at Home. There’s a proven path to how to safely transition patients from intensive care to a home care environment when they are either ventilated, have tracheostomy, have a PEG tube, need TPN, you know what I mentioned in the beginning. And you can only make that happen with critical care nurses 24 hours a day in a home care setting by bringing the intensive care into the home. Those critical care nurses need to have a minimum of two year’s critical care nursing experience.

Well, here in Intensive Care at Home, we employ hundreds of years of intensive care and critical care nursing experience in the community which is unmatched by other service providers. We are also the only service that has third party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home. Again, that is unmatched by anyone in Australia, the U.S. or the U.K. as my research has gone.

So, when you go home from intensive care, with tracheostomy, with the PEG tube, with the ventilator, it needs to be evidence-based just like treatment in intensive care is evidence-based. It’s not any different in the home care environment and when people go home, they need to go home according to the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, which are evidence based and we have published them on our website.

And again, you need to have a critical care nurse with a minimum of two years, critical care nursing experience 24/7, 24 hours a day, to take the patient home from intensive care safely and keep them home predictably, right. Our clients do not go back to ICU because we can keep them at home predictably all day every day. Because of the skills, the intellectual property we’ve built, and the teams we’ve built to make that happen, on a day by day basis.

So, some ICUs still have no understanding what needs to happen in the community and how the interface works between intensive care in the community. Some ICUs have no idea about what’s evidence-based in the community, what’s necessary to provide quality standards. Some ICUs still have the only goal to get patients out as quickly as possible. And obviously a lot of families are believing everything that comes from hospitals.

Well, if you do that, you better start doing your own research before you sign up for anything where you blindly run towards the fire, which is what’s happened in this situation here. If I’m sure that the family now has second thoughts and understands that we are the experts in this field when it comes to transitioning patients from intensive care to a home care environment and more importantly, keeping them at home predictably maximizing their quality of life because that’s what it’s all about. There’s no quality of life in intensive care, but that’s quality of life at home for long-term intensive care patients with Intensive Care at Home.

So in summary, speak to the experts whether we might be watching this and you’re working in an ICU, you might be a doctor, you might be a nurse, you might be a hospital executive watching this thinking, how can I manage my intensive care beds and how can I work with my patients to get them home and make sure they get what they need without having them bounce back into ICU all the time. So I hope that makes sense.

If you have a family member in a similar situation, talk to us, we can help you with the transition, we can help you with the funding. We can help you with the advocacy, in this situation here, there also was no advocacy, there was no time for it. There was just the mad rush towards something that is unsafe and jeopardize this lady’s life. Thankfully she’s now in ICU, and she’s been looked after but going home next time, we can make that happen safely.

So now if you have a loved one in intensive care in a similar situation and needs Intensive Care at Home, please reach out to us. We can help you to take your loved one home. We provide critical care nurses at home 24 hours a day for patients that are on ventilation with tracheostomy, patients that are not ventilated but have a tracheostomy, adults and children that are on BiPAP, CPAP, Home TPN, IV potassium, IV magnesium, IV antibiotics, PICC line management, Central line management, Hickman’s line management, port management, also palliative care at home.

Now, we are currently operating all around Australia, in all major capital cities as well as in regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider in Victoria, an NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland) approved service provider in Queensland. ICare approved service provider in New South Wales, as well as a DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider. We have also received funding through public hospitals, Departments of Health, as well as through private health funds. So please reach out to us if you need help.

And if you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help, we can help you there privately. Please reach out to us as well.

We’re also providing NDIS Level 2 and Level 3 Specialist Support Coordination if you need help with that. We’re also providing NDIS nursing assessments if you need help with that.

And if you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we want to hear from you. If you have worked for a minimum of two years in critical care ICU or ED. And if you have completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in Albury Wodonga on the New South Wales, Victorian border in Bendigo, in country Victoria, as well as in Warragul Country Victoria, we also want to hear from you.

If you’re an intensive care specialist, we are currently expanding our medical team as well. And if you’re an intensive care specialist and you have bed blocks in your ICU, which I know you have, then I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks by taking your patients home, which also includes palliative care for some patients.

And we are also providing an ED bypass service for the Western Sydney local area health district. We send our critical care nurses into the home to avoid ED admission. So if your ED is bed blocked, we can help you eliminate those bed blocks by bypassing ED and by providing some ED services at home.

And if you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because again, we can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED. We want to hear from you as well.

And if you’re an NDIS Support Coordinator and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants or you’re looking for a nursing assessment for your participants, please reach out to us as well. We can help you.

Thank you for watching.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Click the like button, click the notification bell. Share the video with your friends and families and comment below what you want to see next and what questions and insights you have.

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.