Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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, including home TPN.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

CAN YOUR SERVICE AT INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME CONTINUE THE WEANING PROCESS OF GETTING MY BROTHER OFF THE VENTILATOR?

 

You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:

https://intensivecareathome.com/can-your-service-at-intensivecare-at-home-continue-the-weaning-process-of-getting-my-brother-off-the-ventilator/

In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is 

My Dad is on a Ventilator for 3 months & is Suffering from a Major Depression Here in ICU. Can your Service at Intensive Care at Home Help Us Bring Him Home?

Hi Patrik,

I am in Melbourne Australia. I’m in the process of gathering more information regarding at home ventilator care and weaning.

My father is 71 and currently in an ICU in Melbourne. He has been in the ICU and on a ventilator for about three months. He is stable and has begun the weaning process. So we are discussing the next steps for him.

However, he’s only been able to wean for a couple of days, and then he went back into controlled mode and it seems to be really slow. He is at times tolerating CPAP settings, and sometimes the tracheostomy collar for small periods throughout the day, but needs to go back in a controlled mode overnight, where he gets a set rate from the ventilator. And then during the daytime, he doesn’t really last for more than an hour on CPAP and then maybe a few minutes on the tracheostomy mask.

I’m interested in any and all information you can give me regarding ventilation care at home and weaning, including availability, cost, insurance coverage, and the list goes on. My dad is actually in a private ICU and has private health insurance.

We believe that going home would be so beneficial for him. It would be beneficial for us as a family. He is really suffering from major depression here in ICU. And if he doesn’t get home, we think he’s losing the will to live. And he’s in a dark room in ICU, no natural daylight. And he has no natural day and night rhythm.

And whilst the ICU seem to be doing all they can, it’s just not a good environment for him. And we believe going home. We’ll speed up the process and weaning him off the ventilator.

Please let me know how you can help us.

From,

Jenna

Hi Jenna,

Thank you so much for your question and for your email.

Now, what you are describing here is, sounds to me like we can help you get your dad home on a ventilator with a tracheostomy and continue the weaning him off the ventilator at home.

Now, in terms of cost, the ICU bed costs around $6,000 per bed day. We can probably provide that for around half of the cost, which means your private health insurance will have an interest in cutting down that cost by half. So the private health insurance will probably pay for it. And the ICU should have an interest in helping your dad leave ICU, free up the ICU bed, free up equipment, free up staff and make room for another patient that is in a dire need of ICU, because your dad can really be looked after at home going forward.

In terms of medical oversight, that could be a GP. It could be here in Melbourne. It could be the Victorian Respiratory Support Service (VRSS), at the Austin hospital. There are a number of avenues we can help you with from a medical point of view. How we can help you with medical oversight and also help us because we can’t really take your dad home against medical advice and we don’t want to do that either. But it sounds to me like your dad is a very good candidate for going home and the cost will be taken care of. I’m pretty sure by the private health insurance.

From our end, it’ll probably take a few weeks to set it up, getting equipment, getting staff and so forth, but we’ve done it before and we can do it for your dad as well. We are Melbourne bases. You might be aware. So get in contact with us and we’ll go from there.

Probably best to call me on 0410942230.

Take care.

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, Sunbury, Bendigo, Mornington Peninsula, Bittern, Patterson Lakes, Frankston area, South Gippsland, Drouin, Warragul, Trida, Trafalgar and Moe 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.

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.