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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, otherwise medically complex adults and children at home, including Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), Home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), Home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), also home tracheostomy care for adults and children that are not ventilated. We also provide IV potassium infusions, IV magnesium infusions at home, IV antibiotics. We also provide port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, Hickman’s line management, as well as palliative care services at home.
Now, in today’s question, I want to answer a question from Nidia who says, “Hi, Patrik, my dad is 66 years of age. He’s in ICU for 13 days. He has a history of some brain strokes in the past. It’s been a year since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. Recently, for the last month or so, he had some problems with swallowing, which made him lose weight. Yesterday, they did a tracheostomy. Is there hope since all other organs are vital, but he can’t breathe on his own? What home care services are available for my dad? I’ve seen that you’re providing tracheostomy care at home.”
So, thank you Nidia for sharing your dad’s situation. So, is there hope? Well, I tell you what there is hope for. There is hope for your dad going home, that is for sure, because that is bread and butter for us to take your dad home with tracheostomy. That’s what we do all day, every day. He will need 24-hour nursing care with specialist nurses because tracheostomy is an artificial airway, and it’s evidence-based to take your dad home with intensive care nurses, 24 hours a day.
You can look up the evidence on our website at intensivecareathome.com. You can look up the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines where the evidence says you need intensive care nurses 24 hours a day at home to make it safe for a tracheostomy, tracheostomy ventilation, and ventilation without a tracheostomy. That is the bottom line. It’s evidence-based Intensive Care at Home services have been around now in Europe and in Australia for over 25 years. It’s evidence-based and it’s a no-brainer.
In terms of your long-term prognosis of your dad, that is obviously something you need to discuss with the neurologist with the Parkinson’s in particular, but also with the previous strokes, as well as the diabetes. You need to discuss that with the relevant specialist.
What we can do for you here is absolutely maximize the quality of life for your dad by going home, because he doesn’t have any quality of life in ICU or in hospital. You and your family don’t have any quality of life by your dad being in hospital or in ICU. So, the long-term outlook on maximizing quality of life at home or depending on what is exactly happening with your dad or potentially quality of end of life is in a home care environment, not in an ICU.
So, even if your dad may not improve, that’s something I can’t comment on here. What we can improve, once again, is quality of life at home and quality of end of life at home as opposed to a stay in ICU, that I can guarantee you because that is what we’ve been doing for over a decade now here with Intensive Care at Home in Australia and we can do the same for your dad, there is no question about that. So, I hope that answers the question. How do we do it? Well, we do it by selecting the right critical care nurses for you at home, the ones that are suitable for a home care environment that the ones that you like, and trust. We help you with setting up equipment for you. We help you with the funding side of things.
Please, again, keep in mind Nidia that an ICU bed costs $5000 to $6000 per bed day, whereas Intensive Care at Home is half of the cost. So, no matter what insurance you have, someone has an interest, whoever is paying for the ICU bed is having an interest in cutting the cost by 50%. Again, that’s why this is a win-win situation.
Once we’ve got all of that in place, we organize equipment with you and select the right staff. We obviously have you involved in the staffing selection process if that is what you want. So, that’s how we usually go about it. So, I hope that answers your question. I would love to hear more from you. I would love to hear more from other families who have loved ones in intensive care because you have a loved one in a similar situation in intensive care. You’re probably scratching your head and thinking where to from here, or you might be at home already and you have insufficient support and you’re realizing, “Oh, whatever we’ve got now is not working. We don’t have the specialist care.” Your loved one or yourself, maybe you might go back into hospital all the time, you don’t feel safe, you realize there’s something missing and I would only encourage you to reach out to us. If you are stuck in a situation like that, we can help you to take your loved one home or improve the situation for your loved one at home.
I’ll give you one example. Our very first client that we had at home, he is ventilated with a tracheostomy, and he was bouncing back into ICU because other arrangements couldn’t keep him at home predictably, we put a stop to that. As soon as we started that this client never ever went back into ICU ever again because we keep our clients home predictably with our skills and know how, because we provide critical care nurses at home, 24 hours a day, for patients that are on ventilation with tracheostomy, patients that are not ventilated but have a tracheostomy, adults and children that don’t have a tracheostomy but are on BIPAP, CPAP, Home TPN, IV potassium, IV magnesium, IV antibiotics, PICC line management, central line management, Hickman’s line management, port management, as well as palliative care at home.
We are currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities, as well as in regional and rural areas. We are a NDIS approved service provider all around Australia. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider in Victoria and NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) approved service provider in Queensland, iCare approved service provider in New South Wales, 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 through private health funds. So, reach out to us if you need help. If you are in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help, please reach out to us privately.
We are also providing Level 2 or Level 3 Specialist NDIS Support Coordination if you need help with that. We are also providing Specialist NDIS nursing assessments if you need help with that.
We are currently also providing an ED (emergency department) bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District where we send our critical care nurses into the home or into residential aged care facilities to keep them out of emergency department.
If you are a NDIS Support Coordinator and you want nursing care for your participant, I also encourage you to reach out to us at intensivecareathome.com, or even if you don’t know how to go about getting nursing care for your NDIS participants as part of clinical governance, providing evidence, but also as part of choice and control, please also reach out to us. We can help you with that.
Like I said, the NDIS in Australia is funding nursing care. It just needs to go through the right advocacy process which we are the experts in. So please, please reach out.
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 or ED and pediatric ICU, and if you ideally completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in Albury, Wodonga on the New South Wales, Victorian border in Bendigo, and in Country Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Country Victoria. We want to hear from you and we are looking for people that want to complement our team, that are team players and that are looking for regular work.
We are a service provider with a tailor-made solution for our clients. We are not an agency. We pride ourselves on providing a tailor-made solution for our clients. So, if you’re looking for agency work and you want to come and go, please don’t apply. Only apply if you want to make a difference to our client’s life, if you want regular work, and if you want to make a difference to our clients and their families’ lives, that includes working with our clients on a regular basis and not come and go.
If you are an intensive care specialist, we are currently also expanding our medical team.
If you’re an intensive care specialist and you have bed blocks in your ICU, which I know you do, then I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU, ED, and other high acuity areas by taking your patients home, which includes palliative care for some patients.
If you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because again, I know you’ve got bed blocks in your hospital. I know you’ve got bed blocks in your ICU and in your ED, please reach out if you need help.
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Thanks for watching.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
Take care for now.