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If you want to know if you can take your father home after 4 months in ICU on a ventilator with the tracheostomy as a result of COVID-19, stay tuned! I’ve got news for you.

My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com, and I’ve got an email today from Kim. It’s actually a very short email, but I think it captures a lot about Intensive Care at Home and what families and patients really want.

So, Kim writes,

“Hi Patrik,

My 78-year-old father has a tracheostomy and is ventilator dependent as a result of COVID-19 for about 4 months now. For all the reasons you keep mentioning in your videos, him and our family would like for him to be at home, but it seems impossible so far. Can Intensive Care at Home help?”

It’s a short email, but it sums up everything that Intensive Care at Home is doing, and it also sums up what ICUs are doing because they cannot meet the needs of long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. We have so many similar inquiries. Clearly, intensive care units cannot meet the needs for those patients and their families, which is why they’re coming to us and reaching out. It’s a cry for help. But the good news, Kim, is we can help. It is not impossible, otherwise, we wouldn’t be in business, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you here on this video.

So, what needs to happen here is this. First off, let’s get the funding organized. Someone will need to pay for it and that someone, is often health insurance or NDIS or departments of health or if your dad is a veteran, for example, at the Department of Veteran Affairs, the funding is not the issue here. It’s a mindset issue, not a funding issue. Because if you’re telling me, it seems impossible so far, we just haven’t spoken to the right people yet. It is a mindset issue, not a funding issue.

It’s also not a logistical issue. Once the funding is there, we’ll organize equipment, we’ll set up your home, your dad’s home. We will select the team to look after your dad, 24 hours a day, at home. We have a lot of experience setting up high performing teams at home that can look after your dad safely and replicate the ICU bed at home. It is absolutely not impossible. The word impossible doesn’t exist in our world.

So, what else is there? What is also important is that you as a family keep soldier on and keep pushing here for what you want. That is often half of the battle, don’t give up. Make sure they absolutely know what you want and make sure they absolutely know what you’re going after here.

Now, also keep in mind your health insurance or whoever is paying at the moment for the ICU bed is paying $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day for your dad to be in ICU. $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day. Intensive Care at Home is approximately half of that, 50% of that. So, not only is there a very strong human case for dad to go home by improving his quality of life, it’s also a very strong business case because whoever is going to pay for it is paying half of the ICU bed. The other very strong case here is our service is helping the ICU to free up the ICU bed, which is also something they’re highly interested in.

I have worked in critical care nursing for 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager in ICU before I started setting up Intensive Care at Home. I know the dynamics in intensive care. I know what they want.

With Intensive Care at Home, it is absolutely possible for your dad to go home, Kim. So just reach out to us with a phone call at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website. You sent an email already but if you want to send another email, send it to info@intensivecareathome.com, but I think it’s inevitable that you and I get on a call as quickly as possible.

So, to wrap this all up, with Intensive Care at Home, we are providing 24-hour critical care nurses at home and we are providing a genuine alternative to a long-term stay in intensive care for predominantly ventilation, tracheostomy adults and children, Home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), Home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation without tracheostomy, tracheostomy without ventilation, home TPN, home IV potassium infusion and home IV magnesium infusion. We’re also providing ventilation and tracheostomy weaning at home. We’re also providing palliative care at home. We’re providing port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted central Catheter) line management, as well as Hickman’s line management. We’re also providing nasogastric tube management and PEG tube management at home.

We are also sending our critical care nurses into the home for emergency department bypass services. We have done so successfully as part of a program at the Western Sydney Local Area Health District, their in-touch program saving approximately $2,000 per patient that we keep at home instead of them going to the emergency department. We’re also in a position to cut the cost of an intensive care bed by around 50% and intensive care bed costs around $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day. Our service costs between to $2,500 and $3,000 per bed day and we’re freeing up an ICU bed, so it’s a win-win situation all around not even mentioning the improvements for quality of life for patients and their families

With Intensive 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 (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider all around the country, TAC (Transport Accident Commission) and WorkSafe in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), and the Department of Veteran Affairs all around the country. Our clients and we as a provider have also received funding through public hospitals, private health funds, as well as departments of health.

We are the only service provider in Australia in 2024 that has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. We’ve been achieving this level of accreditation since 2012, which is how long we’ve been in business for. No other provider has achieved this high level of accreditation in the community and has created this much intellectual property for Intensive Care at Home nursing than we have. That puts us in a position to employ hundreds of years of critical care nursing experience combined in the community for our clients. No other service provider employs a higher level of skill in the community than we do, which enables us to look after the highest acuity adults and children in the community. No other provider in Australia can take on a higher acuity in the community than we can, safely.

If you’re at home already and you’re watching this, and you realize that you don’t have the right level of support. I’ll give you a tangible example here. One of our first clients over 10 years ago, was a client who was at home on a ventilator with the tracheostomy with a support worker model. Of course, support workers cannot keep looking after a patient at home on a ventilator with a tracheostomy. That’s like flying the airplane with a cabin crew instead of the pilot because this client was at high risk of dying. He was going in and out of ICU because support workers simply could not keep him at home predictably, of course not. They have no skill, no experience, no knowledge how to look after the ventilator and the tracheostomy. That is an intensive care nursing skill. Period.

Then eventually the client found out about us, and we were proving our concept there very fast. When we started working with the client. He never ever went back into ICU ever again and he was safe. We can do the same for you if you’re not safe at home. If you don’t have enough funding, let us do the advocacy. Let us help you. We can help you with all of it, otherwise we would not be in business. We have always successfully advocated for our clients.

That’s also why we’re providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination. We have a team of NDIS Support Coordinators, and they have a wealth of knowledge. I will put into the written version of this blog an interview that I’ve done with Amanda Riches, which is one of our NDIS Support Coordinators. We’re also providing TAC case management and WorkSafe case management in Victoria.

If you are a NDIS support coordinator or case manager from another organization watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, please reach out to us as well. If you’re looking for funding for a nursing care for your participants and you don’t know how to go about it and what evidence to provide, I encourage you to reach out to us. We can help you with the right level of advocacy. We also provide NDIS specialist nursing assessments done by critical care nurses with a legal nurse consulting background.

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we’re currently hiring for jobs for critical care nurses in the home in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, in Albury, Wodonga, in Bendigo, in Victoria, in Geelong in Victoria, and in Warragul in Victoria. If you have worked in critical care nursing for a minimum of two years pediatric ICU, ED, and you have already completed a postgraduate critical care nursing qualification, we will be delighted hearing from you.

I have a disclaimer though because we are offering a tailor-made solution for our clients, which includes regular staff. Our clients won’t have the same staff coming over and over again because they are very vulnerable and very special. So that’s why we need regular staff. So, if you’re looking for agency work where you can come and go, this is not going to be the right fit for you. We are looking for consistency and our clients are looking for consistency. So please, only apply with us if you can give us regular and consistent availabilities for shifts and if you’re really keen on building relationships with us and with our clients, otherwise it’s not going to work.

If you’re an intensive care specialist or an ED specialist, we also want to hear from you. We are currently expanding our medical team as well. We can also help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED for your long-term patients or for your regularly readmitting patients with our critical care nursing team at home. We’re here to help you take the pressure off your ICU and ED beds and in most cases, you won’t even pay for it. Even if you do pay for it, it’s much more cost-effective than what you’re paying in ICU or in ED for.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this and you have bed blocks in your ICU, ED, and respiratory wards, please reach out to us as well. We can help you fast.

If you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you’re watching this, and you need help. We want to hear from you 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 info@intensivecareathome.com.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families with Intensive Care at Home and intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, share this video with your friends and families and leave your comments below what you want to see next, what do you think about today’s topics and what insights you have from this video.

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.