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My Mother’s in ICU Needing Tracheostomy After Heart Attack, Can INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME Take Her Home?
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. We’re also providing home care services to otherwise medically complex adults and children at home, which includes Home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), Home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), also home tracheostomy care for adults and children that are not ventilated. We also provide Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV potassium infusions, home IV magnesium infusions, and home IV antibiotics. This also includes port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, as well as Hickman’s line management, and that also includes palliative care services at home.
We are also sending our critical care nurses into the home or into a residential aged care facility to provide emergency department bypass services.
Now, let’s get to an email today from James who says,
“Hi Patrik,
Our mom was admitted to ICU after a heart attack on the 28th of May. She was intubated after a stent procedure in the catheter lab, and since then, her health has declined with light pneumonia, kidney failure, dialysis, bed sores, secretions on her lungs etc.
At Day 13, they tried to extubate her. Extubation means the removal of the breathing tube.
After 14 hours of her sitting up, speaking with us, getting her voice back, and having speech therapy and physiotherapy, we then got a call at 2 a.m. saying her heart rate became sporadic and her breathing labored, and they were forced to intubate her again. Intubation means putting the breathing tube back into someone’s throat to start ventilating them. They now want to do a tracheostomy.
The palliative care doctor is being very forceful with us to make a decision to either do palliative care or a tracheostomy. We think that she would be able to fight through it with a tracheostomy, as aside from her smoking, she was a fairly healthy active senior before being admitted to the catheter lab and then to ICU for an angioplasty and an angiogram.
We would like to know that if we agree to a tracheostomy and she can’t be weaned off the ventilator, if your service can take my mom home because we would like to bring her home as soon as possible because we don’t think that intensive care is a conducive environment for weaning her off the ventilator and it’s also not conducive for her quality of life. It is also not conducive for our family’s quality of life because we are over an hour away from the ICU.
Any advice how Intensive Care at Home can help, get my mom back home, get our family reunited at home, would be greatly appreciated. As presently, we are very concerned with our mom’s situation and also the constant churn of nurses in ICU is causing her sundowner’s syndrome and we think a familiar home care environment will help.
From, James.”
But James, thank you so much for sharing your mom’s situation, your family situation. I mean, this is a very common situation that we’re seeing all the time that patients are stuck in ICU long-term because they can’t be weaned off the ventilator.
Now, before we look at home care, the first thing is your mom might have a tracheostomy and then she might be weaned off the ventilator and then most of your problems will be gone, that would be the best-case scenario. Given that your mom is elderly, she may not thrive in weaning off the ventilator, and the best place for her might be going home, and that is certainly something we can facilitate. We have facilitated for many, many of our clients and improve the quality of life, or in some instances, quality of end of life for our clients and their families.
We free up the in-demand ICU bed. ICU beds are the most sought-after beds in the hospital, and we’re cutting the cost of the ICU bed by around 50%, that’s 50. So, we’re cutting the cost of an ICU bed by around half. So, we are providing a win-win situation all around whether it’s for you and for your mom, whether it’s for the hospital or whether it’s for the funding body of the ICU bed.
So, how does it work? Well, setting up home care for your mom, we organize the equipment, we organize a team, of course. The right staff for you are critically important, you don’t just want to have anyone coming into your home, you’ve already talked about the churn of nurses in ICU, we’ve already talked about that people coming and going is not conducive to your mom’s recovery or to your mom’s care and treatment because there’s just strangers coming and going, and that would be different in the home care environment because we have stable teams for our clients. The same people coming to your home over and over again, making sure you have a stable team of ICU nurses at home.
In terms of funding, you shouldn’t worry too much about funding because someone is forking out $5000 to $6000 per bed day right now, and whoever that is probably health insurance in your case or even if it’s public money, someone has an interest in cutting that cost by 50%. So, it’s all about the advocacy. Given that your mom is elderly, she’s not NDIS funded but that’s okay. Once again, there are other funding bodies that can carry the cost because the cost is so much lower for Intensive Care at Home as opposed to the ICU bed in a hospital; it is the most expensive bed and the most sought-after bed in a hospital. So, getting the cost down for that bed is a win-win situation and is in everyone’s interest.
Also, with Intensive Care at Home, when it comes to long-term intensive care stays, it is actually evidence-based. I encourage you to look up our evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines on our website at intensivecareathome.com, just look at the Intensive Care at Home Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines and they’re any evidence based.
So, James, I hope that answers your questions and what your next steps are. We’ve spoken on the phone already, I just thought it’s convenient for us to read the email out as well so everyone can understand what families are dealing with in intensive care and what the solutions are.
So, with Intensive Care at Home, if you have a family member in a similar situation or you might be watching this yourself and you might be stuck in ICU, reach out to us here at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to info@intensivecareathome.com.
We are currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities and in all regional and rural areas. We are a NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) accredited service provider. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider and WorkSafe approved service provider in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) in Queensland. We are also a DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider all around Australia. We and our clients have also received funding through public hospitals, private health funds as well as departments of health.
We are also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination which would be critical in a situation like this to get NDIS funding in the first place. But even if you’re a case manager from any other organization, please reach out to us as well. But if you don’t have enough funding or you’re not happy with funding, whether that’s the NDIS or any other funding scheme, I encourage you to reach out. We’ve been successfully involved with the advocacy of our clients from Day 1.
If you are a NDIS support coordinator from another organization or a case manager from another organization, and you’re watching this and you’re wondering how you can get nursing care for your NDIS participant or client, you need a nursing assessment or a NDIS nursing assessment, or if you need any help with the advocacy for your NDIS participant or any other client, please reach out to us as well. We can help you with all of that. We have been involved in most of the advocacy for all of our clients successfully.
If you are a critical care nurse and you have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience, ideally with a post postgraduate critical care qualification, we want to hear from you as well. We currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in Albury, Wodonga, and in Bendigo, Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Country Victoria. So, we have a wide variety of job opportunities for critical care nurses that have the right mindset and the right skills. Because we provide a tailor-made solution for our clients, which means we have regular staff with regular clients and that means we’re not a nursing agency where people come and go. Again, it is critically important that our clients have stable teams. So, please only apply if you can give us regular work and if you’re serious about working with us.
Now, if you’re an intensive care specialist or an intensive care consultant, and you’re looking for a career change, we are currently also expanding our medical team. We want to hear from you as well.
If you’re an intensive care specialist or ICU consultant working in ICU, and you’re looking to free up some of your ICU beds for your long-term stay, we can help you eliminate those bed blocks and you’re not even paying for it.
The same if you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because once again, we know you have bed blocks in your hospital, in your ICU, in your ED, on your respiratory wards, we can help you eliminate all of that as well, once again, you don’t even pay for it.
All of that you get 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 are watching this and you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K., please reach out to us as well. We can help you there privately.
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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.