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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies at home and where we also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units at home whilst providing quality care for long-term, ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies at home, otherwise medically complex clients at home, adults and children, which includes BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), home tracheostomy care for adults and children that are not ventilated, Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV potassium infusions, home IV magnesium infusions, as well as home IV antibiotics. We also provide port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, as well as Hickman’s line management, and we also provide palliative care at home.

We also have sent, and we continue to send our critical care nurses into the home for emergency department bypass services. We have done so successfully for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District, their in-touch program.

Now, let’s go to an email from Pamela that I had, and Pamela says,

“Hi Patrik,

My husband has been in ICU for over 4 months, and we are looking at taking him home, but he needs TPN feeding, and he has a tracheostomy.

I want you to let people know that kidney failure can be reversed in ICU as my husband had no kidney function and had dialysis and diuretics together for a couple of weeks and lots of prayer and now his kidneys are working perfectly fine.”

I’ve been saying that for the longest, I am a critical care nurse by background, and I have been working in critical care for nearly 25 years in three different countries where I have been working as a nurse manager for over 5 years in critical care. I’ve been running Intensive Care at Home since 2012.

So, we’ve been saying that all the way that kidney failure in intensive care can be reversed. It’s not a guarantee of course, but it can be reversed. We have more to say about that at intensivecarehotline.com where we provide education, consulting and advocacy for families in intensive care.

Back to Pamela’s email, “He does have problems from the drug induced coma they put him in, and he had three internal bleeding and pneumonia and lung infections. We want to have him at home as quickly as possible because there’s just no quality of life in ICU. It’s not a good environment. We’re not sure how Intensive Care at Home will work for my husband, but we are curious to find out.

From, Pamela.”

Pamela, thank you so much for sharing your husband’s situation. If your husband has been in ICU for 4 months, that’s terrible, and I’m glad he’s off the dialysis.

Also, you’re mentioning pneumonia and lung infections. Well, ICU patients are very prone to catching infections because they are surrounded by bugs from other patients, and that simply does not happen at home. Home care is a much cleaner environment, Intensive Care at Home, in particular, is a much cleaner environment than having patients stuck in ICU for weeks or months on end and it’s just not appropriate.

Now, the good news is you would see under our case study section at Intensive Care at Home that we are doing Home TPN and we’re also doing tracheostomy care at home. All of that is bread and butter for us.

So, what are the next steps here, Pamela? The next steps are to organize funding for your husband. How is that going to happen? Well, again, there’s a very good case to be made in a situation like that.

So, your husband and you want to be at home to improve quality of life and improve quality of end of life, depending on your husband’s situation or any situation for that matter. The ICU wants to free up the ICU bed and whoever is paying for the ICU bed wants to cut costs. The ICU bed costs around $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day. With Intensive Care at Home, you can reduce that cost by around 50%. What does the ICU want? The ICU wants to free up the ICU bed to admit the next patient who is in need of ICU or critical care. Once again, it’s a win-win situation.

Now, once the funding is in place, then we can start looking at hiring a team for your husband, a critical care nursing team, and looking at all the equipment that needs to be organized. We’ve been doing this since 2012, and we can do it for your husband.

There’s no issue in organizing the right team because you want regular people. I’m sure you’ve seen in hospitals and in ICU that people are coming and going and that people, there’s no stability. No stability of the team. You probably have all sorts of nurses, and you don’t really have a say who’s going to look after your husband. Whereas at home, it’s all about you and your husband and you will have a say who’s coming into your home. So, the onus is on us to find the right staff for your family environment.

So, I hope that answers your question, what to do next, Pam. We’ve done it many, many times and we can do the same for you and for your husband.

Now, with Intensive Care at Home, we are currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities and in regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider in Australia, 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 (Department of Veteran Affairs) all around the country. Our clients also receive funding through public hospitals, private health funds as well as departments of health.

We are employing hundreds of years of intensive care and critical care nursing experience combined in the community that is unmatched in 2024 in Australia. No other provider brings this high level of skill into the community.

We’re also the only provider in Australia in 2024 that has third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. There’s no other provider in Australia that has achieved that level of accreditation.

Now, if you’re at home already in a similar situation, you’re at home, you need home TPN, you have a tracheostomy, and you realize that whatever you do is not working, that whatever set up you have is putting your or your loved one’s life at risk, you should also reach out to us. We can help you with the advocacy, we can help you with the funding, and we’ve done so again from Day 1 because otherwise we would not be in business.

Now, we’re also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination, and we can help you and your family member to get on the NDIS. We are also providing TAC case management. We help you with obtaining the right funding through the right funding scheme. That’s part of our skill set.

Now, if you are an NDIS Support Coordinator watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, please reach out to us as well or if you’re looking for funding for more nursing care and you don’t know how to go about it, I also encourage you to reach out to us. We can help you with the advocacy and we also provide NDIS nursing assessments.

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

Because we are offering a tailor-made solution for our clients, which includes regular staff, our clients want to have the same staff coming over and over again because they are very vulnerable and it’s all about building those critical relationships and having regular and stable teams.

So, if you are looking for agency work where you can come and go, this may not be the right fit for you because we’re looking to engage with you on a long-term basis and our clients want to engage with you on a long-term basis. So, it’s all about building critical relationships, long-term.  So, it remains a win-win situation for everyone.

If you are an intensive care specialist or ED specialist, we also want to hear from you. We are currently expanding our medical team as well. We can help you to eliminate your bed blocks in ICU, in ED for your long-term patients or for your frequent flyers. We’re here to help you to take your pressure off your ICU and ED beds. In most cases, you won’t even pay for it.

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 there.

Lastly, 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, contact 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].

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

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on the show. You will get notification for the YouTube live if you’re a subscriber to my YouTube channel or if you are a subscriber to our email newsletter at intensivecareathome.com.

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.