Peter Case Study – A Young Man on a Ventilator Passed Away at Home as NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) denied him ICU Nurses, 24 hours a day!

Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home, 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 patients and medically complex patients at home, including home TPN and including non-invasive BIPAP and CPAP ventilation.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

HOW TO SELECT THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT FOR INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME?

You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:

https://intensivecareathome.com/how-to-select-the-right-equipment-for-intensive-care-at-home/

In today’s blog I want to share another case study from one of our clients.

Peter Case Study – A Young Man on a Ventilator Passed Away at Home as NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) denied him ICU Nurses, 24 hours a day!

In today’s blog, I want to talk about a case study from one of our clients, actually, who sadly passed away a few weeks ago after prolonged cerebral palsy and after many complications including he was on BIPAP ventilation, he had a PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, he had a PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tube, he had a PEJ (Percutaneous Endoscopic Jejunostomy) tube, he had numerous seizures, he was battling pneumonia and so forth. Now, why do I want to bring up this case study today? Not only to be homage to our client, but also bring up issues with NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funding. He was obviously funded 24-hour intensive care nursing because of his high complex needs, because if it wasn’t for our 24-hour intensive care nurses coming into the home, he would’ve spent his time in intensive care instead. That’s how unwell he was.

And of course, the NDIS who was the funding body for our lovely young man said a few weeks before our client passed away that he can be looked after by enrolled nurses instead. That’s pretty much like bringing enrolled nurses into intensive care and letting them look after a patient on ventilation with a PICC line, with the central line. So, if it doesn’t happen in intensive care, why would it happen in the community?

So, we do understand that a lot of our clients have constantly battling to getting the clinically appropriate funding, and we are obviously supporting them all the way along because, there is enough evidence that intensive care nurses at home can keep people out of intensive care, which is bread and butter in our service. And I just want to appeal to the NDIS that the clinical evidence that’s provided for someone at home on a ventilator is overwhelming, that they need intensive care nurses, 24 hours a day.

And you can actually see that in the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines where it’s documented on our website. And the mechanical home ventilation guidelines are evidence based from over 25 years of intensive home care nursing in Germany, and over 10 years intensive home care nursing here in Australia. Enough research has gone into it that the only way to keep a client safe at home on a ventilator, whether that’s with or without a tracheostomy, is with an intensive care nurse, 24 hours a day, especially if there are other complications such as a PICC line. Our client needed a PICC line for blood sugar management, for hyperkalemia management and so forth.

So, the evidence was overwhelming, and yet the NDIS denied this gentleman the intensive care nurses, 24 hours a day. Now, in order to, unfortunately, confirm everything that I’m saying here, the client passed away eventually, and that was inevitable. His condition deteriorated. But it just goes to show once again that the intensive care nurses, intensive care nursing at home was appropriate for his clinical condition. It’s just very sad that the NDIS doesn’t seem to understand what’s really happening in the community, what skill level is needed, and to keep clients at home maximize their quality of life. Apparently, the NDIS is all about choice and control, but if they’re withdrawing funding that is clinically appropriate, it’s going to be very difficult to keep clients at home and keeping them out of ICU and maximizing their quality of life at home.

So, it’s an appeal to the NDIS to look at clinical evidence very closely. Look at doctors’ letters, nursing assessments, look at our mechanical home ventilation guidelines on our website. Again, they’re evidence based. And so that more people can live at home with intensive care nursing, 24 hours a day. So, that we can keep our clients out of ICU at home, get them home quicker, and again, create win-win situations, maximize quality of life for clients and their families. Cut the cost of an intensive care bed by around 50% and free up intensive care resources as well. Again, it’s a win-win altogether for all parties involved.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care or you need support at home because you have insufficient support, if you have a loved one on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, or even if you’re not ventilated and you have a tracheostomy, you should still have intensive care nurses, 24 hours a day, to keep you safe.

As I’ve just explained in my example, it’s all about safety. It’s all about evidence-based clinical care, which you will see on our website at the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines. Someone at home on a ventilator, invasively or non-invasively ventilated or has a tracheostomy, needs to have an intensive care nurse with a minimum of two years ICU experience at home to keep them safe. And again, that’s documented, and evidence-based after decades of research.

We employ hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience in the community with our team, with our amazing team of intensive care nurses. As far as I’m aware, in 2022, we are the only organization in Australia that brings intensive care nurses into the home, and that is also third party accredited for Intensive Care at Home. No other organization, as far as I’m aware, in 2022, has achieved that accreditation and has built the intellectual property and the knowledge that it takes to provide intensive home care nursing at home.

So again, if you have a loved one in intensive care, or if you’re at home already and you have insufficient support, you should definitely contact us. If you have unfilled shifts, if you need help with funding with the NDIS, we can absolutely help you because we are involved in the advocacy, and we wouldn’t be in business if our clients didn’t have the funding for the 24-hour intensive care nursing. We know how to challenge and how to provide the clinical evidence.

Now, if you are an intensive care nurse and you’re interested in working for us, check out our career section and contact us. If you’re looking for jobs in Melbourne or in Sydney, in the Melbourne metropolitan area, but also in South Gippsland, also in Sunbury, and in Bendigo as well as in Sydney, and in Brisbane, please contact us on our career section. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you so much for watching.

I’ll talk to you next week.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com.

Take care for now.

Again, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service intensive care at home and if you want to find out how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s Patrik, just with a K at the end.

Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies and you can look at our case studies as well at our service section.

Intensive care at home Case studies

And if you are at home already and you need support for your critically ill loved one at home, and you have insufficient support or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you with all of that.

And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse with a minimum of two years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience, and you ideally have a critical care certificate, please contact us as well. Check out our career section on our website. We are currently hiring ICU and pediatric ICU nurses for clients in the Melbourne metropolitan area, Northern suburbs, Sunbury, Bendigo, Mornington Peninsula, Bittern, Patterson Lakes, Frankston area, South Gippsland, Drouin, Warragul, Trida, Trafalgar and Moe as well as Wollongong in New South Wales.

www.intensivecareathome.com/careers

So we are also an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Also have a look at our range of full service provisions.

Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.

This is Patrik from Intensive Care at Home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update.

YOUR INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME

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