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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 & 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 patients and medically complex patients at home.
In last week’s blog, I talked about,
QUESTIONS ANSWERED ABOUT HOME TPN (TOTAL PARENTERAL NUTRITION)
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
https://intensivecareathome.com/questions-answered-about-home-tpn-total-parenteral-nutrition/
In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is
Can Your Service at Intensive Care at Home Help My Wife to Wean Off the Ventilator at Home?
Hi Patrik,
My wife is getting close to being “kicked out of ICU”. She’s still slowly weaning using pressure support of around 10 for 10 hours/day, and 8 for a couple of more hours and the other time, she is off the ventilator. Scleroderma makes her chest muscles weaker than a normal person and so weaning is more difficult. Her lungs are great at oxygen exchange. She is close to 100% on the pulse oximeter all the time.
The ICU is suggesting that she either accepts that she will always be on a ventilator, set at fixed at some level, ie. the CPAP or the pressure support or the other option is palliative care.
I haven’t had a great deal of time to make phone calls and check on other options, but I have found your website very helpful, and I’m thinking of taking her home and weaning her at home. The problem for me is the cost. I think my wife is only 47, and I’m not sure how to get her out of ICU financing it. We are in Sydney, Australia. How can I afford weaning her at home?
I look forward to your advice.
From Len
Hi Len,
I’m very sorry to hear about your wife’s situation, but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel. There’s no need for palliative care for your wife. She can go home with our service Intensive Care at Home. We can do the weaning at home.
If it’s possible at all, we need to know more about the clinical situation. I need to find out what stops her from getting off the pressure support and why can’t she be off the ventilator for more than six hours a day.
In terms of cost, you should be looking at the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The NDIS provides funding for patients on ventilation with tracheostomy. Most of our clients get funding through the NDIS. They get funding through other avenues as well, but predominantly the NDIS. So you should contact us to take the next steps.
We also provide NDIS specialist support coordination, which is something you and your wife will need, and that will help you with funding. And then obviously once the funding is there, we can help you with nursing care. The trouble is that ICUs really have no idea that the NDIS can actually help them manage their beds. Most ICUs have no idea what’s happening in the environment. They’re so focused on their day to day looking after patients, which is fair enough.
But yeah, the NDIS is a good scheme now and can help many patients in ICU to go home even though they’re ventilated with a tracheostomy. And again, we can help you with a specialist support coordination. You should definitely contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send an email to [email protected].
I hope that helps Len. Give me a call and then we can take the next steps from there.
Thank you.
Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service intensive care at home and if you want to find out how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s Patrik, just with a K at the end.
Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies and you can look at our case studies as well at our service section.
Intensive care at home Case studies
And if you are at home already and you need support for your critically ill loved one at home, and you have insufficient support or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you with all of that.
And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse with a minimom of two years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience, and you ideally have a critical care certificate, please contact us as well. Check out our career section on our website. We are currently hiring ICU and pediatric ICU nurses for clients in the Melbourne metropolitan area, Northern suburbs, Mornington Peninsula, Frankston area, South Gippsland, as well as Wollongong in New South Wales.
www.intensivecareathome.com/careers
So we are also an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Also have a look at our range of full service provisions.
Also, we have been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program in the past for innovative healthcare companies.
https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator
https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/
Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.
This is Patrik from intensive care at home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update.