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My Fiance’s in ICU On Ventilation, Tracheostomy & Dialysis for Weeks, Can He Go Home?

Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. 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, also for medically complex patients at home, including Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), Home IV potassium infusions, Home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), Home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), IV antibiotics, but also for adults and children that have a tracheostomy and are not ventilated. We also provide services at home for port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, as well as Hickman’s line management. We also provide services for palliative care at home. In essence, we are a genuine alternative for a long term stay in intensive care.

Today, I want to answer a question from Angela who says, “My fiancé has been in ICU for a few weeks now, and he wishes to go home, but he needs help with ventilation, tracheostomy, and dialysis. I have been doing dialysis at home prior to his hospital admission this time, but I don’t think I can do both dialysis, ventilation, and tracheostomy, it just seems to be too much. Can Intensive Care at Home help and what would that look like? We are in Australia. Can you help?”

So, here is what that would look like Angela, for your fiancé. So obviously, he’s in ICU, he’s depressed, he’s had enough, he wants to go home, for whatever reason, he can’t be weaned off the ventilator, but the desire for him to go home seems to be very strong, and that’s a good thing. He’s got the will to live, and he’s got the will to go home. So, in Australia right now, you should be looking for NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funding, that’s assuming, there’s nothing else, your fiancé hasn’t had a car accident or is a DVA client.

Generally speaking, most of our clients are now funded through the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, but even if your fiancé would not qualify for the NDIS, he might qualify for some hospital funding for some department of health funding, these are our discussions we can have once you are certain that this is what you want to do next. I am certain that we can help you with this because that’s bread and butter for us. We have been operating in Australia since 2013, and most of our clients at home are ventilated, tracheostomy, and if your fiancé needs dialysis, that’s fine as well. We can do all of it.

We’re basically sending you critical care nurses into the home, 24 hours a day, to manage all of that, to keep your fiancé at home predictably, and also, make sure he has quality of life at home because there is no quality of life for long-term patients in intensive care, no matter what anyone says.

Also, the cost of an ICU bed is around $5000 to $6000 per bed day, and Intensive Care at Home is approximately half of that cost. So, on top of improving your fiancé’s and your quality of life, the added-on benefit is simply that there’s some massive cost savings, probably around 50% and again, this provides a win-win situation. Then, once the funding is sorted, we will help you select the team, the right team for you and your family, of course. We help you select the staff at home that want to work with you, and you want to work with them. The right fit for your family, the right fit for your fiancé, the right fit for you, that’s very important. We’ll also take care of any equipment needs you might have. If you need equipment, we’ll take care of that.

We’re also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination if you need help with that, and also, our services are evidence based. So, what I mean by that? When you look on our website intensivecareathome.com and you go on the link, Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, you will see that on the mechanical home ventilation guidelines, only critical care nurses with a minimum of two years ICU, pediatric ICU, or ED experience are safe to look after ventilated and tracheostomy clients at home. There’s nothing else that is safe, and I would imagine the ICU would only let your fiancé go home with a safe service like us anyway.

We’re also the only service in Australia in 2024 that has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home. So, it’s all evidence-based, it’s all accredited, and it’s the best option for you.

Also, you can have a look at our case studies, how we keep clients at home, we’ve done it many, many times, we’ve delivered probably close to half a million hours of Intensive Care at Home in the last 10 years. So, that’s a massive success for the space, massive success for our clients, of course, keeping them at home. I hope that helps you understand how we can help you get your husband home.

If you have a loved one in intensive care in a similar situation, I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you take the same steps that we will do for Angela taking your loved one home, or if you’re watching this as a patient yourself, you can definitely reach out to us as well.

Send us an email to [email protected] or to [email protected], or simply call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website at intensivecareathome.com.

You might be at home already and you have insufficient support, and you realize that whatever support you have is not working for you and you want to change providers, or you need more funding, then I encourage you to reach out to us as well. If you need more funding, we wouldn’t be in business if we couldn’t help our clients with the right funding to make our service work.

With Intensive Care at Home, like I mentioned at the beginning, 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. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) in Queensland, 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, please reach out to us if you need help.

We are also providing Level 2 or Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination, or if you need help with the NDIS in general, I would only encourage you to reach out to us as well.

We are also providing an ED (emergency department) bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District. So, we’re keeping patients out of ED as well by sending our critical care nurses into the home.

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we want to hear from you. If you have worked in the ICU or in pediatric ICU or in ED for a minimum of two years, and you have ideally completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we want to hear from you. 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.

Please note, if you are a critical care nurse and you want to work for us, we are not an agency. We are a service provider that has a tailor-made solution or has tailor-made solutions for our clients, and that includes regular shifts with regular clients because our clients want the same staff over and over again, they don’t want people coming and going. So, only apply for us if you want to commit, and if you want to work with our clients regularly and if you want to make a difference to their lives.

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

If you’re an intensive care specialist looking, watching, or reading this, and you have bed blocks in your ICU, which I know you do, we can help you eliminate your bed locks. We can help you in taking your patients home safely, and you don’t even end up paying for it.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because once again, we can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED. We want to hear from you as well.

If you are a NDIS Support Coordinator and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, or you’re looking for a nursing assessment for your participants, or you’re looking for nursing advocacy for your participants, please reach out to us as well. If you don’t know how to get nursing care through the NDIS, we encourage you to reach out to us as well.

Once again, you can contact us at intensivecareathome.com, either on the numbers on the top of our website for a phone call or simply send us an email to [email protected].

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 the video with your friends and families, comment below what you want to see next and what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thank you so much for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.

Take care for now.