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If you want to know what options your 90-year-old mother in ICU on long-term ventilation with tracheostomy and dialysis has to go home, stay tuned! I will answer that question for you today.

My name is 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 care for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies and otherwise medically complex adults and children at home including Home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), Home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), 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, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, Hickman’s line management as well as palliative care services at home. It also includes ventilation weaning at home.

Now, today I want to answer another question from one of our readers who says,

“Hi Patrik,

I have my 90-year-old mother in ICU, and she’s been there for about five months now. She’s been on a ventilator with the tracheostomy. I would like to get her home and try taking care of her there because ICU is telling me that hospice should be my only choice. Hospice and palliative care should be my only choice. I would like to provide her with dialysis and ventilation, tracheostomy, weaning off the ventilator at home. Is this something that Intensive Care at Home can provide for my mother?

From Patricia.”

Thank you so much, Patricia, for contacting us and also for leaving your voice message. Absolutely, this is exactly where Intensive Care at Home comes in and provides this much-needed win-win situation. Patients and families can’t live in ICU forever. You’re saying it’s been five months now for your mom and she has no quality of life, you and your family have no quality of life because of course you are spending day and night in ICU with your mom so you can be with her and support her and give her that moral support that is so important in a situation like that, and of course, she wants to go home, and you and your family wanted to go home.

On the other hand, you have ICUs who want to free up their ICU beds, ICU beds being the most sought-after beds in a hospital, that’s number one, and also the most expensive bed in a hospital with the cost exceeding $5000 to $6000 per bed day. If long-term patients block ICU beds, then you’ve got flow-on effects such as you can’t do elective surgery because there are no ICU beds available for certain types of surgery like open heart surgery, for example, you can’t admit patients through the emergency department, once again, because of bed blocks in ICU.

So, with your mom going home and improving her quality of life is a win-win situation for everyone. Also, the cost of Intensive Care at Home is about 50% of the cost of an intensive care bed, once again, this is a win-win situation. So, what we need to do in a situation like that, Patricia, is really talk to the ICU as well, look at the medical condition at all the details that your mother is going through at the moment, what we need to set up at home, organize the funding because once again, whether it is health insurance, whether it is NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), whether it’s WorkSafe, TAC (Transport Accident Commission), I’ll come to the funding bodies in a minute in more detail, it is a win-win situation because currently the funding bodies or the insurances are paying $5000 to $6000 per bed day.

By your mother going home, we can cut the cost of that intensive care bed by approximately 50% and continue care, treatment, and weaning dialysis at home with creating a stable intensive care nursing team, with the oversight of a doctor, making sure your mom is safe at home. But also making sure that from a hospital perspective, she’s not coming back to ICU. You want your mom home predictably. We want our clients home predictably, which is what we’ve been doing here at the Intensive Care at Home since 2012. We’ve been keeping our clients at home predictably since 2012.

So, once the funding is organized, we then hire ICU nurses for your mom in your area and create a stable team. It is important that you have a stable team, that you have ICU nurses in your home, that you can get to know, that you like and trust because that takes time. But you have a lot more leverage at home than you have in a hospital because at the end of the day, you are in control at home and you can tell us what you want at home and we work around that and with your preferences, of course.

Now, if you have a similar situation, your loved one is in intensive care in a similar situation or you are at home already and you have insufficient support and your loved one keeps going back to ICU all the time, we can certainly put a stop to that. We can certainly help you with funding because we’ve been advocating for our clients from Day 1 successfully, otherwise we wouldn’t be in business.

Now, you can reach us at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].

Now, 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 approved service provider all around Australia. We are a TAC approved service provider in Victoria as well as WorkSafe in Victoria. We are an iCare approved service provider in New South Wales as well as NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) approved in Queensland. We are also a DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider all around Australia. We have also received funding through public hospitals, private health funds as well as the departments of health. So, reach out if you need help, including help with funding.

Once again, if you’re at home already and you’re going back to hospital or to ICU all the time, you have an unstable team, you have potentially support workers looking after you on a ventilator with the tracheostomy, which could be a death sentence because support workers don’t know how to manage medical emergencies. We have seen people die because of that; I urge you to call us as quickly as possible so we can help you as quickly as possible.

Once again, we can help you with funding. Or if you’re at home on a ventilator as well and you have clinical questions, I urge you to give us a call as well.

We are also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination if you need help with that. We are also providing NDIS specialist nursing assessments if you need help for yourself or for your NDIS participants if you are a NDIS support coordinator.

If you are a NDIS support coordinator or a case manager from any other funding bodies and you need a nursing assessment, please reach out to us. We can help you. Or if you need more funding for nursing care and you need the justification, please reach out to us. We can help you with that.

We’re also sending our critical care nurses into people’s homes to avoid emergency department admissions. We have done so successfully in the past for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District as part of their in-touch program.

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 in critical care for a minimum of two years, ideally with a postgraduate critical care qualification, we want to hear from you. We currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in Bendigo in Victoria, in Warragul in Victoria, as well as in Albury, Wodonga on the Victoria New South Wales border. Please note that we have a tailor-made solution for our clients, which includes regular staff. So, we are not a nursing agency where people are coming and going. So, please only apply to us if you are serious in working with our clients on a regular basis.

If you are an intensive care specialist, we are currently expanding our medical team as well. We want to hear from you.

If you are an intensive care specialist or ICU consultant and you have bed blocks in your ICU, I encourage you to talk to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU, you won’t even pay for it with the NDIS, for example, and we can improve your patients and family’s quality of life, which is something we should all want to achieve in healthcare.

If you’re 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, ED, and also on respiratory wards. Please reach out to us if you want to have a conversation and if you want to have help.

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 are in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help, we can help you there privately. Please reach out to us as well.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Click the like button, click the notification bell, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have from this video.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on the show and you get notification for the YouTube live if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel, or if you are a subscriber to our email newsletter at intensivecareathome.com, you can subscribe there.

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.