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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term, ventilated adults and 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 adults and children with tracheostomies, also otherwise medically complex adults and children at home including Home BIPAP, Home CPAP, home tracheostomy care when adults and children are not ventilated, also Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition). We also provide IV potassium, IV magnesium infusions at home, as well as IV antibiotic infusions at home. We also provide port management, Hickman’s line management as well as palliative care services at home, and that also include ventilation weaning at home.
In today’s video, I want to talk about the clients that are at home already with a ventilator, with the tracheostomy but don’t have the right level of support, so case in point. Having been in the Intensive Care at Home space for over a decade now here in Australia, but also having been in the Intensive Care at Home space nearly 25 years ago in Germany, I have a fair bit of insight into this world.
We are getting phone calls all the time where clients are at home on a ventilator with the tracheostomy, but they don’t have the right level of support i.e. they don’t have intensive care nurses 24 hours a day, which in many instances has simply been a death sentence, or clients go back to hospital all the time.
So, once again, case in point. This week, I had a phone call from a prospective client who we’ve been engaging with for the last few months. His wife is at home on a ventilator with a tracheostomy for a rare neurological condition and he doesn’t have the support he needs. We are helping him currently with the advocacy process with the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme). But the bottom line is, he ended up taking his wife to hospital this week because simply, the support workers that he’s got there cannot manage ventilator, tracheostomy, and in this instance, the oxygen saturation dropped. His wife had multiple secretions. He needed to suction her every five minutes, and that’s simply not the scope of a family member or a support worker, it’s the scope of an intensive care nurse.
So, he ended up taking her to hospital because the NDIS, in many cases, lets people down and it’s trying to send support workers and then patients end up back in hospital all the time, that’s one of the better scenarios. But the reality is, we know of at least 7 patients in the last 10 years that have passed away at home because they didn’t have funding for 24-hour intensive care nurses, which by the way is also evidence-based. So, we’re not making this up because we’re running Intensive Care at Home, there’s actually evidence behind it.
So, if you go to our website, intensivecareathome.com, there’s a section on the website, the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, which are evidence based. Those Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines are a result of nearly 25 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Germany and nearly over 10 years Intensive Care at Home nursing in Australia. So, the bottom line is there’s actually evidence.
Now, I ask any support worker agency out there, where is your evidence? Well, the evidence is that people have died because they didn’t have the intensive care nurse 24 hours a day and either family members or support workers were not able to manage medical emergency with a tracheostomy or with a ventilator which, once again, is an intensive care nursing skill. It is like flying the airplane with the cabin crew instead of the pilot.
And once again, I can also only encourage you if you have a family member at home already on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, or even without a ventilator and a tracheostomy, you should be reaching out to us. We can potentially help you to troubleshoot, talk you through things. But more importantly, we can help you getting the right level of care for your loved one because we know it’s the wild west out there when it comes to ventilation and tracheostomy for our clients that are looked after by, once again, support worker agencies or even registered nurses without intensive care nursing experience. Tracheostomy and mechanical ventilation are an intensive care nursing skill, nothing else.
You go to a hospital. Why are there no tracheostomy patients on the hospital floor or hospital ward? Because simply they don’t have the skills. It takes a minimum of two years intensive care nursing to be competent with tracheostomy and advanced airway management, and at least two years intensive care nursing experience to be competent with mechanical ventilation and all the complications that can come out of that.
Now, here at Intensive Care at Home, all of our nurses have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience. Most of them also have completed a postgraduate critical care qualification. As a matter of fact, the average nurse on our books has probably 8 to 10 years intensive care nursing experience. Imagine, compare that to a support worker providing care to an intensive care patient at home with no resources, with no backup, that is madness and, in my mind, it’s a criminal offense. People should be sued to even provide such a service or the NDIS allowing for that to happen.
So once again, if you have a loved one at home on a ventilator with a tracheostomy and you’re not getting the right level of support, you know there’s an upgrade needed, you know you need more funding, we can help you with that.
So, NDIS tribunals, when we provided all the evidence, they have decided in favor of our clients, of course, because we’re providing all the evidence. It’s not negotiable, its evidence based. The research has been done about this way back when, and if support worker agencies claim they can do that, where’s your evidence? Where’s your research paper?
So, call us if you have a loved one at home on a ventilator already and you know it’s not working and you know you don’t have the right level of support, you know you don’t have the right level of funding, please reach out to us. Same with clients at home, adults or children with tracheostomies, we want to hear from you as well because you probably know it’s dysfunctional and we can bring some much-needed function into your life with our teams and helping you with the right level of funding.
Now, we also have a Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordinator on our team. So, I encourage you to reach out to us, especially with NDIS funding. We can help you with the right level of funding because we have our own NDIS Support Coordinator.
Now, with Intensive Care at Home, currently we are operating all around Australia. We are in all major capital cities as well as in regional and rural areas. We are a NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider all around Australia. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider and WorkSafe approved service provider in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) in Queensland and as well as a DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider all around Australia. We have also received funding through public hospitals, departments of health as well as private health funds. So, reach out to us if you need help.
Always keep in mind that if your loved one is in intensive care, it costs around $5000 to $6000 per bed day. With Intensive Care at Home, it costs around 50% of that. If you pay less than 50% for a support worker that could end up with a death. You can’t really cut the cost of an intensive care bed by more than 50%, but that’s in essence what we do here at Intensive Care at Home.
Once again, our website is intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send an email to [email protected].
Once again, if you’re at home already and you have insufficient support or your loved one is in ICU or you are in ICU and watching this, or you might be at home watching this and you know it’s not working, please reach out to us and we can help you with nursing care and the funding.
We’re also sending our critical care nurses into the home to keep emergency departments empty. We have done so successfully for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District. So, if your hospital needs to have critical care nurses at home to bypass your ED and take the pressure off your ED, we can help you with that as well.
If you are a NDIS Support Coordinator watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants for more funding because you don’t know how to advocate for nursing care, please reach out to us as well. We can also help you with a specialist NDIS nursing assessment. We also have our own NDIS Support Coordinator, Level 2 and Level 3. Please reach out to us so we can set you up with the right NDIS Support Coordinator and with the right level of care.
If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we want to hear from you as well. If you have worked for a minimum of two years in critical care ICU, pediatric ICU, ED, or you ideally have completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we want to hear from you. We currently have jobs in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Albury, Wodonga in Bendigo, in Country Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Country Victoria, we want to hear from you.
We’re looking for critical care nurses who want to complement our teams, people who are team players and people who are looking for regular work. We are a service provider that has a tailor-made solution for our clients and that includes having regular teams and regular staff members. So, we are not an agency where people come and go.
If you’re an intensive care specialist or ICU consultant, we’re currently expanding our medical team as well. We want to hear from you.
If you are an intensive care specialist or an ICU consultant and you have bed blocks in your ICU, I also encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks, and you don’t even pay for it, and we can improve the quality of life and quality of end of life for some of your patients in your ICU.
If you are a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because, once again, we can help you eliminate bed blocks in ICU, pediatric ICU, respiratory wards, and ED.
If you’re watching this and you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help, please reach out to us as well. We can help you there privately.
Once again, our website is 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 like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for Intensive Care at Home, but also for families in intensive care. Click the like button, click the notification bell, share the video with your friends and families, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have.
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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.