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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!

How to keep more patients at home and out of ICU/PICU taking the pressure off hospitals!

So in today’s video, I want to briefly talk about the coronavirus crisis and how it impacts on intensive care units and on intensive care at home.

And also how we can help intensive care units and also how we can help your family to stay clear of hospitals and intensive care units especially during this time of crisis.

We’re already helping families to keep their loved ones out of intensive care, despite high acuity needs such as mechanical ventilation, tracheostomy, but also non invasive ventilation such as BIPAP or CPAP or other medical complexities that our clients deal with on a day by day basis.

So as this healthcare crisis has been unfolding in recent weeks and months and probably will continue to unfold over the next few weeks with the coronavirus, intensive care units all across the country and all over the world will be filling up with many critically ill patients putting even more pressure on an already stretched intensive care system.

You know, after having worked in intensive care for 20 years,ICU doesn’t need a pandemic like the COVID-19 to be full, to be busy and to be stretched to the maximum.

Anybody who’s worked in intensive care for any length of time can appreciate what’s probably going to come over the next few weeks and what’s already happening in some countries.

From that perspective you know, our job here at intensive care at home obviously is to keep our clients at home safely, so they can stay away from already overstretched ICU’s and hospital system.

So that’s our number one job, making sure that all of our clients are safe at home and don’t have any readmissions and that obviously our staff are safe.

And on that note, I really want to say a big, big thank you to our staff that keep our clients Safe at Home 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making sure they don’t have to go back to intensive care or to a hospital. That is our main goal. And again, I can’t thank our staff enough to make that happen on a day by day basis 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But coming back to intensive care and how this impacts and how our service helps intensive care units to free up bed capacity to look after probably more acutely unwell patients that are probably about to get into the system very soon.

So especially long term ventilated patients in intensive care cause bed blocks, they are often there for much longer than necessary, especially if they have ventilation and tracheostomy needs.

With our service intensive care at home, we can take them home and keep them home predictably with a 24 hour roster, we can free up ICU capacity that most likely will be needed over the next few weeks for mainly COVID-19 patients flogging into the system.

By helping ICU’s free up bed capacity we’re creating a win win situation.

Now also, when somebody is long term ventilated with a tracheotomy in intensive care, because of the prolonged and often burdensome stay in intensive care, it makes them much more prone to get an infection, in an environment where there’s so many infections going around already, and now with the COVID-19 situation, it’s going to be heightened.

So, from that perspective, it’s time for you if you have a loved one in intensive care with long term ventilation and tracheostomy needs to get out of there before ICU is get overcrowded and also priorities might be changing as this crisis might be unfolding.

Now is the time really for your loved one to leave intensive care and go home. And also from an intensive care perspective, if you are an intensive care health professional watching this and you know your ICU is full, then you should contact us because you will have long term ventilated patients in ICU that take up your precious, scare and in-demand ICU beds, taking up your bed capacity that will be needed for other patients, and we can help you free up that bed capacity.

On top of that we can reduce the cost of an intensive care bed by around 50%. As you know, an ICU bed costs around $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day, we can easily cut that cost to 50%.

And you have an empty ICU bed available that is much needed, especially in this day and age, but it’s also needed any other day of the year.

But with the ICU sector coming under so much pressure in the next few weeks and months you know, you may have to rethink your strategies from an intensive care perspective, how you manage your beds, your resources, your staff and also your equipment and we can help you with all of that.

So that’s my message for this week. Go and empty your intensive care beds come to intensive care at home mainly for long term ventilated patients with tracheotomy, but also for other patients that have medical complexities, it doesn’t necessarily have to be ventilation.

Nobody needs to stay in ICU for a medical complexity and they can be looked after by us at home with ICU nurses 24 hours a day and we’re looking after pediatric clients as well.

Paediatric intensive care units refer their patients to us as well. So adults and pediatrics, go and give us a call or send me an email to [email protected]

And also from a funding perspective, currently, in Australia the NDIS is funding our service. So from that perspective, there are funding avenues available either on a family level or even for you as a hospital provider.

We can help you with all of that putting the funding in place.

Thank you for watching this video.

Again, if you have a loved one in intensive care with long term ventilation and tracheotomy, you should definitely Contact us or contact me on one of the numbers on the top of our website at intensivecareathome.com.

Or just send me an email to [email protected]

Now, 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 family and client centric environment, it’s a much more holistic environment as well.

I’d urge you to check out our careers section here

https://intensivecareathome.com/careers/

We have vacancies for experienced intensive care and pediatric intensive care nurses in Melbourne, on the mornington Peninsula, in Warragul, the northern suburbs in Melbourne, in Sunbury so really all across the city, and you can escape the hustle and the bustle of ICU and work in a much nicer and much more family friendly and holistic environment.

Please also have a look at our service section where we detail exactly how we deliver services, tailor made for our families and their clients.

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. I wish you and your families all the very best during this healthcare crisis, and together we’ll get through it. Take care!

Patrik Hutzel