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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, including home TPN.
In last week’s blog, I talked about,
CAN MY MOTHER BE WEANED OFF THE VENTILATOR AND TRACHEOSTOMY AT HOME? LIVE STREAM!
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
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 Continue the Weaning Process of Getting My Brother Off the Ventilator?
Hi Patrik,
My 58-year-old brother has been in intensive care for 6 months now. Initially, he went into ICU with a community acquired pneumonia. He ended up ventilated, couldn’t be weaned off the ventilator initially because he had recurring pleural effusions and he ended up with recurring chest drains. Now, that is still ongoing to this very day because he couldn’t come off the ventilator. He had a tracheostomy after a few weeks in ICU. And now he’s still struggling with the pleural effusions that prevents him from coming off the ventilator.
Now, as I said, he’s been in ICU now for six months. He has time off the ventilator now for about eight hours a day. He is getting mobilized every day, sitting in a chair. He’s definitely making progress, but there still seems to be a psychological dependency for him to get off the ventilator. And he therefore is very depressed, and we just don’t think that in the ICU, he can make any further progress.
Now, my question is, can your service, Intensive Care at Home, take him home, continue the weaning process at home? Can he go home with the chest drain? Those are the questions that I have. Who would be paying for it? We are in Sydney, Australia.
Thank you very much.
From Valerie
Hi Valerie,
Thank you so much for your question and it ties right in with the livestream that I did on YouTube last week, where I was talking about, “Can my mom be weaned off the ventilator and the tracheostomy at home instead of ICU?” And it ties right in with that. And I do believe your brother is the perfect candidate for going home on a ventilator with the tracheostomy because he’s been in ICU for so long, he’s now slowly making progress.
Can he go home with a chest drain? Yes, I think he can go home with a chest drain. We could potentially remove the chest drain at home. We could also then do a follow up with the chest x-ray at home. There are x-rays services at home now, so I think that’s all doable.
In terms of who will be paying for it. Well, the people who will be paying for it are the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme). Your brother is less than 65 years of age, and he can go home with the NDIS. The NDIS will be paying for it. We also provide specialist support coordination here at Intensive Care at Home, and we can help you arrange that with our specialist support coordinator and with the NDIS.
I hope that helps.
Best next step is for you to contact me on one of the numbers on the top of our website, but this is definitely right up our alley. Your brother can definitely go home with our service Intensive Care at Home.
It creates a win-win situation. It frees up an ICU bed, it gives you what you and your family want, because you want him at home. It saves the hospital money, and it frees up the in demand ICU bed, that is in high demand. It’s a win-win situation overall and we go from there.
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 minimum 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, Sunbury, Bendigo, Mornington Peninsula, Bittern, Patterson Lakes, Frankston area, South Gippsland, Drouin, Warragul, Trida, Trafalgar and Moe 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.
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.