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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 and where we also provide tailor made solutions for hospitals and Intensive Care Units whilst providing quality services for long-term ventilated patients and medically complex patients at home.
In last week’s blog, I talked about,
QUEENSLAND MUM WITH MOTOR NEURONE DISEASE DENIED ‘LIFE-PROLONGING’ SURGERY
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is
My Brother Is in ICU with a Tracheostomy & Can’t Come Off the Ventilator. Can You Help Me Bring Him Home?
Hi Patrik,
I have been following your blog and I have also seen your numerous job ads in Sydney and in Melbourne for a while. It is very encouraging to read and listen to the many subjects that you’re posting about when it comes to Intensive Care at Home.
Currently, my 42-year old brother has been in intensive care in Melbourne in one of the major hospitals for the last four months. He has a tracheostomy. They organized the Passy-Muir speaking valve, which has been approved by the ENT doctors. The ENT doctors had good things to say about it, however, the speech therapist in ICU only attempted to work with him twice. He’s also now got the PEG tube because they don’t think that he will be off the ventilator anytime soon, if ever.
My brother now can follow commands that I have taught him. It is my belief that if he had the therapy needed, he would come off the tracheostomy, off the ventilator and eating as well as talking. But given that, I’m not happy with what he’s getting there in ICU. I want to bring him home as quickly as possible. So what do I need to do to bring him home and who’s going to pay for it? I do hear that the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) is paying for some of your client services.
Can you help us with this situation?
From Carra
Hi Carra,
Thank you so much for writing in.
So Carra, I can’t comment on what’s happening there in ICU but what I can comment on is that obviously the longer someone stays in ICU with ventilation and tracheostomy, people are getting depressed. ICUs have probably more urgent things to address, meaning, a long term patient like your brother is, may not get the attention he actually needs. He probably gets way more attention at home with a designated team, 24/7, 365 days of the year. I think that might be your next step. Yes, the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) will be paying for it. Given that your brother is 42, he will be qualifying for NDIS. And yes, you’re right, we are advertising for ICU nurses in Melbourne and in Sydney, because more and more clients want to take up our service because they want to leave intensive care, which makes a lot of sense.
So the next step really is to talk to us. We can help you take the next step with the NDIS. We can help you with Specialist Support Coordination, which leads often to funding. And then, the next step is to talk to the ICU, to obviously exercise your and your brother wishes. Then we can look at, equipment at home. We can look at ventilator, suction machines, monitors, a special care bed like a hospital bed, hoist, or lifting machines at home and building a team.
Now, this all takes a little bit of time, but it’s obviously absolutely doable. And also the ICU should be supporting your brother going home because it frees up their ICU bed. And it frees up some of their staff and it saves them a lot of money. As a matter of fact, it saves them about half of the cost of an intensive care bed. So it’s a win-win situation for everyone.
So let me know if you have any further questions. It’s best if you reach out to me directly, call me on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or just send me an email to [email protected] that’s [email protected] and then we can go from there.
Thank you so much.
Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service Intensive Care at Home and if you want to find out how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s Patrik, just with a K at the end.
Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies and you can look at our case studies as well at our service section.
Intensive care at home Case studies
And if you are at home already and you need support for your critically ill loved one at home, and you have insufficient support or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you with all of that.
And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse with a minimum of two years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience, and you ideally have a critical care certificate, please contact us as well. Check out our career section on our website. We are currently hiring ICU and pediatric ICU nurses for clients in the Melbourne metropolitan area, Northern suburbs, Mornington Peninsula, Frankston area, South Gippsland, as well as Wollongong in New South Wales.
www.intensivecareathome.com/careers
So we are also an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Also have a look at our range of full service provisions.
Also, we have been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program in the past for innovative healthcare companies.
https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator
https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/
Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.
This is Patrik from intensive care at home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update.