Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hi it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOMEwhere we provide tailor made solutions for long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomies by improving their Quality of life and where we also provide tailor made solutions to hospitals and Intensive Care Units to save money and resources, whilst providing Quality Care.

In last week’s video blog, I talked about how to keep more patients at home and out of ICU taking the pressure off hospitals.

HOW TO KEEP MORE PATIENTS AT HOME AND OUT OF ICU/PICU TAKING THE PRESSURE OFF HOSPITALS

You can check out last week’s question by clicking on the link here.

In today’s video blog, I want to talk about a question from one of our inquiries, Brandy, and Brandy writes in

MY MUM HAS BEEN IN ICU FOR TWO MONTHS AND IS FAILING VENTILATION AND TRACHEOSTOMY WEANING, CAN SHE GO HOME?

Hi Patrik,

my mom suffers from several health issues. She is currently in ICU on the ventilator with a tracheostomy. She was intubated on the 19th of February and got the tracheostomy on the second of March due to respiratory failure and sepsis. On the fifth of March, they started the ventilator weaning. However the care there wasn’t the best and no one was on the same page, so any attempt at ventilation weaning was unsuccessful.

She also needed 10 units of blood during in the first few weeks due to low hemoglobin. Since the 27th of March, things have become unstable again, they have been running tests to see if she had a GI bleed, which came back negative thankfully. Her hemoglobin and hematocrit have been holding steady for the last several days. She is however still anemic and is on dialysis as well. But the doctors couldn’t determine why she had so much blood loss.

She started doing the tracheostomy collar and weaning in ICU for the last few days and has finally done well now. Up to six hours so far per day and they’re continuing today. My mom really wants to come home and I would like her to come home to my house and stay with me. However, I’m not sure how that works with being in the middle of the tracheostomy collar trials.

Can I request my mom continue to stay in ICU until she can be successfully weaned from the ventilator and then take her home with me? And I’ve seen that with intensive care at home that you can do tracheostomy and ventilation at home. Could you also do home dialysis? And what if my mom could be off the ventilator during the day but needed at night? Can you do that as well?

I’m just trying to respect my mom’s wishes to come home as she is tired of being in ICU. She’s 66 years of age and what should I do? As of today, she is now on BIPAP with the tracheostomy and her CO2 levels are still fairly high. She had to go back on the ventilator for 24 hours a day to get her CO2 levels under control.

When I look at your website, everything looks like exactly what we need. My only question is, what insurance does intensive care at home accept? How can it be funded? Any help with this would be very much appreciated. We are in Melbourne and would very much appreciate your help.

Also, my mother currently suffers from COPD, high blood pressure, diabetes, she had five bypass heart surgeries four years ago, and she is wheelchair bound as she has lost a lot of muscle mass in her legs in the last few months.

Brandy

Hi Brandy

thank you for writing in and sharing your mom’s situation.

Well, it sounds to me like your mother would be an ideal candidate for going home with intensive care at home with our service. For example, after so many months in ICU, your mother would report a very poor quality of life and from what I understand, you would be in ICU day and night, which is not a good place to be.

And also in the current environment with ICU is probably getting fuller and fuller with COVID-19 patients. You want your mother out of that highly infectious environment as quickly as possible. And yes, we can wean your mother off the ventilator at home if that’s possible. You know, if she is on overnight BIPAP only, you know, we can still look after the tracheostomy during the day as well. But it sounds like your mother, you know may need ventilation during the day as well, at least at the moment. And that may change in the future.

But I think from experience, going home just improves your mother’s quality of life and she might become in a better place psychologically where she’s in a much better place to be weaned off the ventilator at home, rather than being in ICU. But that’s the discussion we should be having with the doctors and go from there and see what your mother’s goals are and how realistic are they, and then we can assess from there.

But at the end of the day, what we can provide for your mother is an intensive care substitution service. We can provide the 24-hour care that the mother currently gets in ICU, we can provide that at home with 24-hour ICU nursing care, and that also helps the intensive care units to free up their precious bed, especially again at the moment with ICU is probably getting more and more demand for their beds with COVID-19 patients and you certainly don’t want your mother in an environment where she might be exposed to COVID-19.

So we exclusively work with intensive care nurses that have a minimum of two years ICU experience for your peace of mind. So you know that you’re getting equivalent care at home than you currently get in ICU. As a matter of fact, we’re employing hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience in our service. So you know, you can rest assure that you will get very similar care at home, than you get in ICU just in a much nicer environment because it’s your home, and it’s not a hospital.

Now, next, with the funding, unfortunately, if your mother is 66 years of age, she does not qualify for the NDS, I’m afraid. However, once again, our service can come under a hospital in the home model because we save intensive care units 50% of the cost. And, you know, our service is 50% more cost effective compared to an intensive care unit and especially now with ICU’s being busy, the ICU needs the bed, and also wants to cut cost. And we can help with all of that.

So we’re really providing a win-win situation to get your mother home, your mother wants to be at home, improve her quality of life and the ICU can free up the bed. And we can cut the cost of the intensive care bed by 50% and make room for the ICU to admit a more critically ill patient compared to your mother’s situation. So that’s the situation you should contact me directly again, give me a call. And then we can take the next steps from there.

Thank you for watching this video. Again, if you have a loved one in intensive care with long term ventilation and tracheostomy, you should definitely contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or just simply send me an email to [email protected]

And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse, and you’re looking to get out of the craziness of an intensive care unit, and work for us in a much nicer and more holistic and client- centric environment, you should contact us as well and you should check out our career section on our website here.

We have vacancies currently for experienced ICU and pediatric ICU nurses in Melbourne, on the Mornington Peninsula in Warragul, in the northern suburbs in Melbourne, and also in Sunbury so really all across the Melbourne metropolitan area, and you can escape the hustle and bustle of ICU and work in a much nicer and much more family friendly and holistic environment.

You can also have a look at our service section where we detail exactly how we deliver services or tailor made services I should say for our patients and their families but also for hospitals and intensive care units. We have also been part of the Royal Melbourne Health Accelerator Program in the past for innovative health care companies.

Thank you so much for tuning into this video. And I’ll talk to you in a few days. This is Patrik Hutzel from intensive care at home and I’ll talk to you soon.