How Much Does It Cost to Bring a Patient on Life Support Home and Be Cared for at Home?

Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home where we provide tailor-made solutions for long term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomy. We also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units whilst providing quality services for long term ventilated adults and children with tracheotomies otherwise medically complex patients at home including home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), IV potassium and IV magnesium infusions, as well as IV antibiotics at home. So, we cover the whole range that’s available for patients in Intensive Care at Home. We can do that at home.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

MY DAUGHTER IS IN ICU & THEY CAN’T HELP HER GET WEANED OFF THE VENTILATOR. WHAT WOULD YOU RECOMMEND?

You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:

https://intensivecareathome.com/my-daughter-is-in-icu-they-cant-help-her-get-weaned-off-the-ventilator-what-would-you-recommend/

In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is

How Much Does It Cost to Bring a Patient on Life Support Home and Be Cared for at Home?

So, in today’s blog post, I want to answer a question we get quite frequently, “How much does it cost to bring a patient on life support from intensive care home and be cared for at home?” and that is a great question and a question we get quite frequently. The answer that I’m going to tell you is probably not what you expect. I will give you a monetary term in a minute.

However, before I go into the financial side of things, I do believe that what we do with our service Intensive Care at Home is absolutely priceless and you can’t put a monetary term on what we do. The reason I’m saying that so confidently is ask our clients ask our clients what’s the alternative for them to stay at home? The alternative for them is to go back into an intensive care unit, going through the emergency department and nobody wants to do that.

So, the alternative for our service, Intensive Care at Home, is to go back to intensive care and that’s not a good outlook. Most of our clients have “lived” in intensive care for months, sometimes for years and they certainly do not want to repeat that exercise.

Now, looking at the cold hard facts in terms of how much does it cost? So, an ICU bed costs around $5,000 to $6000 per bed day. Intensive Care at Home costs around 50% of that. So, whilst I think it’s priceless what we do. Those are the facts.

We are currently operating all around Australia. Our clients are accessing funding for 24-hour nursing care mostly through the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), but we’re also a preferred provider for the TAC (Transport Accident Commission) in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, and NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), as well as the DVA Department of Veteran Affairs. We have also received funding through departments of health or public hospitals directly.

But on top of, again, how much does it cost? It’s about the quality of life in some instances, it’s about quality of end of life. You can’t put a monetary term on that. On top of that, for hospitals, they need intensive care beds. How much is it worth for them to have an empty intensive care bed to treat someone that is in dire need of critical care? Imagine there are bed blocks, people can’t access critical care because long term ventilated patients block an intensive care bed whereas they can go home with our service. I hope that answers your question. Yes, half of the cost of an intensive care bed, but it’s priceless what we do.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care, especially long term ventilated with a tracheostomy, and you want to go home, you should contact us at intensivecareathome.com.

If you are an NDIS support coordinator and you have a participant that is in a dire situation with ventilation, tracheostomy, even if they’re not ventilated but have a tracheostomy, if they don’t have a tracheotomy, but need BIPAP, CPAP ventilation, they need an intensive care nurse, 24 hours a day, to get them out of hospital safely.

If you don’t provide that type of care at home, they are at risk of dying just to be very clear there. We have seen it if patients don’t have 24-hour intensive care nurses at home when they are ventilated with a tracheostomy, or if they are having a tracheotomy without being ventilated or if they’re on BIPAP, CPAP, they are at risk of dying if they’re not having 24-hour nursing care with intensive care nurses.

This is evidence as per the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines that you can access on our website, they’re evidence based. Everyone in those situations needs an intensive care nurse at home with a minimum of two years ICU experience, 24 hours a day.

We are also providing our own NDIS support coordination, level two and level three, which includes the specialist support coordination. So, if you need access to an NDIS support coordinator, including NDIS, specialist support coordinator, please contact us as well.

You might be at home already and you might have insufficient support or insufficient funding. Please contact us at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, please contact us as well. We currently have jobs in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland but we are operating all around Australia. You can contact us with your questions and inquiries.

If you are an intensive care specialist and you’re looking for a career change. We are currently expanding our medical team and you might have bed blocks in your ICU, and we can help you eliminate them.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this, you can contact us as well. Again, if you have bed blocks in your ICU, if your EDs are overcrowded, please contact us as well. We are also providing an ED bypass service for the Sydney Western Area Health District. So, we are also sending CCRNs into people’s home to keep emergency departments empty.

Now, thank you so much for watching.

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

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.

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.

YOUR INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME

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