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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!

In the last blog I shared a newspaper and also online article about Dion Detterer a young man in the Blue Mountains in NSW trying to get Intensive Home Care nursing so he can finally get the care he needs to stay alive

Dion’s Fight To Overcome Muscular Dystrophy So He Can Continue Helping Others

You can check out last week’s episode by clicking on the link here.

In this week’s blog I want to share

Mismatch between demand and supply of end-of-life care:

Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services: Reforms to Human Services

It is widely known that end of life care is scattered and unavailable. In a country where 75% of people want to die at home if given a choice and yet less than 15% of people actually do die at home, it is needless to say that the vast majority of people when approaching their end of life do so in an institution.

Finally the Australian Productivity commission released a report in relation to consumer’s choices at the end of life.

The report suggests what we have been saying for over five years, competition needs to be increased and choices for people at the end of their lives need to be made available.

The report also highlights that home care services in general are not readily available and lack quality control. Again, something we have been saying for a long time. Many services in home care lack standardisation and quality control such as third party accreditation like we have.

INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME Quality and accreditation

https://intensivecareathome.com/accreditationquality/

It simply can’t be in the interest of the general public if an Intensive Care bed costs $5,000 per bed day and long-term Intensive Care Patients can be looked after at home with a quality service like INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME for 50% of the cost of a hospital Intensive Care bed.

Therefore increasing competition is a good thing and it will bring cost down, frees up hospital and ICU resources and it creates care models that are more holistic and more Patients& family friendly.

The following information was released last week on the following websites

http://medicalfutility.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/the-productivity-commission-is.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+MedicalFutilityBlog+(Medical+Futility+Blog)

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/human-services/reforms/report

The Productivity Commission is the Australian Government’s independent research and advisory body. It just released a report titled “Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services: Reforms to Human Services.”

The report includes a chapter on end-of-life making several recommendations:

1. The Australian, State and Territory Governments should work together so that Australians can access end-of-life care that better matches their preferences. This will require governments to put greater focus on providing end-of-life care in the place where a person lives.

2. A significant increase in the availability of community-based palliative care is required. To achieve this, State and Territory Governments should:– assess the need for additional services, select providers (typically using competitive processes) and adequately fund those providers– establish standards for community-based palliative care services and fund the delivery of those services for people who wish to and are able to die at home. The standards should include integrated and coordinated nursing, medical and personal care– ensure that monitoring frameworks and consumer safeguards are in place so that quality care is provided, and oversight is maintained, as the volume of services provided increases.

3. Available evidence indicates that the savings from avoiding a single hospital admission for palliative care (costing about $11 000) would more than cover the cost of providing community-based care over a period of months (costing between $6000 to $10 000).

4. People living in residential aged care facilities should receive end-of-life care that aligns with the quality of that available to other Australians. Delivering this will require the Australian Government to:– remove current restrictions on the duration and availability of palliative care funding in residential aged care, so that clinical care is available to all residents at the end of life– fund this additional care– ensure that clinically trained staff hold timely conversations with aged care residents about their future care needs and preferences, and support residents to prepare an advance care plan if they wish to do so.

5. General practitioners and practice nurses could play a much larger role in helping people to articulate their preferences for end-of-life care through advance care planning. Changes to Medicare item numbers are needed to enable this.

6. The effectiveness of the above reforms will depend on governments implementing broader improvements to their stewardship of end-of-life care. This should involve the Australian, State and Territory Governments, through the COAG Health Council:– co-operating to plan, fund, and set standards for end-of-life care so that patients receive high-quality care in each setting and in each jurisdiction– developing and implementing an end-of-life care data strategy that establishes a national minimum data set for end-of-life care, and improves the accessibility and use of data– commissioning an independent review in 2025 of the effectiveness of end-of-life care across all settings in which it is, or should be, provided.

If you want to find out how we can help you to get your loved one out of Intensive Care including palliative care or Long-term acute care(also nursing home) or if you find that you have insufficient support for your loved one at home on a ventilator, if you want to know how to get funding for our service or if you have any questions please send me an email to [email protected] or call on one of the numbers below.

Australia/New Zealand +61 41 094 2230

USA/Canada +1 415-915-0090

UK/Ireland +44 118 324 3018

Also, check out our careers section here

www.intensivecareathome.com/careers

We are currently hiring ICU/PICU nurses for clients in Melbourne, Sunbury and in South Gippsland/Victoria.

We are an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran affairs) approved community service provider in Australia.

We have also been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program for innovative health care companies earlier this year!

https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator

https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/

Thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.

This is Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME and I see you again next week in another update!