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If you want to know if you can take your 74-year-old mother home from intensive care with a ventilator and tracheostomy with stage 4 lung cancer, 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 services for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, otherwise medically complex adults and children at home including Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), Home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), Home  CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) ventilation, also home tracheostomy care for adults and children that are not ventilated. Also, we provide IV potassium infusions, IV magnesium infusions at home, and IV antibiotics. 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 and we also provide ventilation weaning at home.

We also send our critical care nurses into the home for emergency department (ED) bypass services so that fewer patients have to go into the emergency department.

So, in today’s video, I want to talk about a conversation that I had with a potential client this week who said, “Hey, my 74-year-old mother is in ICU at the moment. She has stage 4 lung cancer. She had radiation and chemotherapy. The growth of the cancer has been stopped for now, but she couldn’t be weaned off the ventilator and the breathing tube, and she now has a tracheostomy.”

And he’s asking if we can take her home with Intensive Care at Home. Of course, that is what we do with Intensive Care at Home, that is bread and butter for us taking long-term ventilated patients home from intensive care, which includes palliative care. Because it sounds like this particular client’s mother may need palliative care, and if she does need palliative care, she certainly doesn’t want to have palliative care in an intensive care unit. She wants to spend as much time with her family as possible, which makes a lot of sense.

But also from an intensive care perspective, ICU beds are in high demand. They are highly sought after. They are the most expensive bed in a hospital, costs $5000 to $6000 per bed day. With Intensive Care at Home, we are cutting the cost of an intensive care bed by approximately 50% whilst patients get the same level of care at home, and it provides a win-win situation. On top of that, we are freeing up a highly sought after ICU bed. Once again, it’s a win-win situation. But more importantly for our client and their family, quality of life, or in this situation, quality of end of life will improve drastically.

You have a team of highly specialized intensive care nurses coming into your home rather than you staying in intensive care forever in a day. Having your family around 24 hours a day in an intensive care unit, you might as well have your family around in the comfort of your own home. So really, it’s a win-win situation and a lot of families think, “Is it possible?” Yes absolutely, it is 100% possible providing Intensive Care at Home in a situation like that where someone is in ICU on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, has end-stage lung cancer stage 4, but is unable to wean off the ventilator but can spend quality time at home. That’s what we do here at Intensive Care at Home.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care in a similar situation and you need Intensive Care at Home, please reach out to us. We can help you take your loved one home.

We provide, once again, critical care nurses at home, 24 hours a day, for patients that are on ventilation with tracheostomy, patients that are not ventilated but have a tracheostomy, adults and children that don’t have a tracheostomy but are on BIPAP, CPAP, Home TPN, Home IV potassium, Home IV magnesium, IV antibiotics, PICC line management, central line management, Hickman’s line management, port management, and palliative care at home.

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 which is the National Disability Insurance Scheme approved service provider all around Australia. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) and WorkSafe approved service provider in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) in Queensland, as well as the 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 and Level 3 NDIS Specialist Support Coordination  if you need help with that. We are also providing specialist NDIS nursing assessments if you need help.

If you are at home already and you have insufficient support, if you’re going back to ICU and hospital all the time, especially if you have any of the conditions that I mentioned; you have a ventilator, tracheostomy, BIPAP, CPAP, tracheostomy without ventilation and you have an unreliable team because you have support workers and not critical care nurses, please reach out to us. We can help you get more funding, that’s why we provide NDIS specialist support coordination.

With critical care nurses at home, you would be absolutely safe. Because with support workers, you won’t be safe. As a matter of fact, many patients in the community have died when they’ve been looked after by support workers instead of critical care nurses when it comes to ventilation and tracheostomy of the NDIS, of course not talking about that. But we have evidence for that, we know of at least a handful of clients that passed away in the community because support workers or even registered nurses without intensive care nursing experience couldn’t manage medical emergencies and patients passed away.

If you are a NDIS Support Coordinator watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants or you don’t know how to advocate for more funding for nursing care, please reach out to us as well. We have all the insights and expertise, please reach out to us. Like I said, we also provide the NDIS nursing assessments.

If you are a critical care nurse and you are looking for a career change, we want to hear from you as well. If you have worked for a minimum of two years in critical care ICU or ED, and if you ideally have completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in Albury, Wodonga, as well as in Bendigo in Country Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Country Victoria, we want to hear from you.

We are looking for people that want to complement our team, that are team players and that are looking for regular work. We are a service provider and not an agency. So please only reach out to us if you want regular work and if you want to really make a difference to our clients and their families. Our clients want regular staff, and so if you want to apply for our jobs, make sure you are giving us regular availabilities because otherwise it won’t work.

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

If you’re an intensive care specialist and you have bed blocks in your ICU, I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks by taking your patients at home, which also includes palliative care for some patients, and you won’t even pay for it.

We’re also currently providing an ED bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District. It’s part of a successful tender. So, if you are watching this, and you are an emergency department consultant or you are a hospital executive watching this, I know you have ICU bed blocks and ED bed blocks, please reach out to us. We can help you, once again, you won’t even pay for it, and most of it is NDIS funded now.

Now, 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.  Please reach out to us at intensivecareathome.com and call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us and email to [email protected].

That’s again 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 video, 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, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have from this video.

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.