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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 by improving their Quality of life and where we also provide tailor made solutions to hospitals and Intensive Care Units to save money and resources, whilst providing Quality Care.
So the question that I answered last week was
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video.
In this week’s blog, I want to offer solutions to intensive care units and hospitals
How to increase ICU bed capacity during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis?
So today’s blog topic is how to get more ICU beds with less infection risk.
It has been very interesting to see in recent weeks and recent months that governments and health care services and health care systems all around the world are desperately trying to ramp up their ICU capacities. For example, in Australia, there are currently about 2200 intensive care beds and almost all of them all of the time they’re running at full capacity. There is no COVID-19 pandemic crisis needed to keep ICUs at and above capacity at all times.
With current predictions and modeling for when the peak of the COVID-19 patients needing ICU treatment hits next month in May or in June, there won’t be enough ICU beds in the country. Some hospitals are already preparing for the worst by trying to have extra ICU beds available in recovery theater, Emergency Department or Ward areas.
Some credible sources paint a worst case scenario picture with ICUs needing up to 330% more ICU beds in the next few weeks or months. And I’ll put a link below this video to an article on the ABC website that’s highlighting the increase in ICU beds up to 330%. It has also been talked about creating some “makeshift ICU” is like the military does in war zones, with the difference that those makeshift ICU could be, for example, here in Melbourne at the exhibition center, or what we’ve seen in recent weeks in Central Park, in New York, or in other big cities around the world, like in London as well.
Nobody has ever asked that if we need to dramatically increase ICU bed capacity quickly where resources are coming from?
It might be possible to get more physical beds get more ventilators etc. But who’s going to operate those ventilators and who’s going to look after those patients?
With ICU nurses and ICU doctors already in high demand, can you just increase bed capacity by hundreds or thousands of ICU beds out of thin air without having the appropriately trained staff that can safely look after those critically ill patients needing ventilation, induced coma, prone positioning, inotropes and vasopressors and the list goes on.
To look after critically ill patients safely, doctors and nurses have to go through many years of specialized training either theoretical and practical, both is needed.
In my point of view, after having worked in intensive care for 20 years, it’s scary to hear that all of a sudden doctors and nurses without ICU experience are being fast tracked to look after some of the sickest patients that ICUs have ever seen. This is a scary scenario, as the margin for error in ICU is very little when you’re dealing with lives in the hands of ICU doctors and ICU nurses.
Another solution to deal with this, of needing to drastically and dramatically increase ICU bed capacity is simply of course, to use more of our intensive care at home services.
We are already operational, proven and up and running. No need to set up makeshift ICUs in a park or in an exhibition center or anywhere else where it could potentially be unsafe. We can help ICUs very quickly to increase bed capacity for COVID-19 patients by simply taking long term intensive care patients home and increase ICU bed capacity very quickly.
One of the biggest risk factors for long term ICU patients at present is that they get infected by COVID-19 patients as their highly vulnerable patient group. So what is a workable solution and what is a win-win situation? Well, it’s quite simple, by taking long term intensive care patients home like we do, the risk of getting a hospital acquired infection is mitigated. The risk to get COVID-19 or another infection at home is reduced by far almost down to zero. Quality of life for patients and their families is improved at home with intensive care at home. The cost of a five to $6,000 per bed day ICU bed is reduced by about 50% and hospitals have more ICU bed and staff capacity to look after more COVID-19 or other patients.
INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME can provide the intensive care substitution service at home by bringing ICU nurses into the home 24 hours a day, and creates a win-win situation.
No need to reinvent the wheel. And another point of contention is really at the moment that most elective surgery has been put on hold. And that’s a concern, too, because ICU bed capacity is being freed up for COVID-19 patients. But again, we can help to restart elective surgeries as quickly as possible by freeing up ICU bed capacity as well.
You can also have a look at our case studies and I’ll put a link to our case studies below this video.
Thank you for watching this video. Again, if you have a loved one in intensive care with long term ventilation and tracheostomy, you should definitely contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or just simply send me an email to [email protected]
And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse, and you’re looking to get out of the craziness of an intensive care unit, and work for us in a much nicer and more holistic and client- centric environment, you should contact us as well and you should check out our career section on our website here.
We have vacancies currently for experienced ICU and pediatric ICU nurses in Melbourne, on the Mornington Peninsula, in Warragul, in the northern suburbs in Melbourne, and also in Sunbury so really all across the Melbourne metropolitan area, and you can escape the hustle and bustle of ICU and work in a much nicer and much more family friendly and holistic environment.
You can also have a look at our service section where we detail exactly how we deliver services or tailor made services I should say for our patients and their families but also for hospitals and intensive care units. We have also been part of the Royal Melbourne Health Accelerator Program in the past for innovative health care companies.
Thank you so much for tuning into this video. And I’ll talk to you in a few days. This is Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME and I’ll talk to you soon.