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Hi it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME where we provide tailor made solutions for long-term ventilated Adults & 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.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME AND INTENSIVE CARE?

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

https://intensivecareathome.com/what-is-the-difference-between-intensive-care-at-home-and-intensive-care/

In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is

Why a Tracheostomy and Ventilation Improves the Quality of Life for MND (Motor Neuron Disease)!

Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home with a quick tip for families in intensive care and with a quick tip for patients with motor neuron disease (MND) or ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).

So, we’re currently dealing with an inquiry where there is a client at home with motor neuron disease. The client is in his mid-fifties and he’s been diagnosed with motor neuron disease around two years ago. Obviously, there is a gradual functional decline in MND patients and decline is now at the stage where he needs BiPAP 16 hours a day, noninvasive ventilation, and BiPAP 16 hours a day, he also now needs the Cough Assist.

Now the client is inquiring whether he should have a tracheostomy as the next step and could he then have 24 hours Intensive Care at Home nursing if he ends up with a tracheostomy. The client says that the MND, the neurology team and the respiratory team advises him that a tracheostomy wouldn’t be in his “best interest”, and that he should be thinking about palliative care and end-of-life care instead.

Now the client is obviously smart enough, he and his family are smart enough to do their own independent research. And of course, they found our Intensive Care at Home service, and they actually found that having a tracheostomy and mechanical ventilation with MND, you can go home with intensive care nurses, 24 hours a day when you have a tracheostomy.

And that is certainly what’s happening for some of our other MND or motor neuron disease clients. They are having a tracheostomy and a ventilator 24 hours a day with intensive care nurses at home. And their quality of life is acceptable to them. And they want to live with their families for as long as they can. And this is also an option for this patient going forward.

Now, what needs to happen is this, if you are in a similar situation, doesn’t matter whether you’ve got motor neuron disease or any other disease that requires a tracheostomy. You need to document that on your advanced care plan. And once you document your wishes on your advanced care plan, then the intensive care team needs to follow through on your wishes. You can get a tracheostomy and then you can go home with Intensive Care at Home, and funding will follow.

We can help you with funding. We are very experienced. We wouldn’t be in business if we couldn’t get the funding or help our clients with the funding that is required for Intensive Care at Home. But please keep in mind, we are cutting the cost of an intensive care bed by 50%, hence, there is an economic model behind the whole Intensive Care at Home model already. But this is not about money. This is about quality of life and what families and patients want, need and deserve.

So that’s my quick tip for today.

This is Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home and I’ll talk to you in a few days.

Go and check out intensivecareathome.com for more information. Like this video, comment down below what insights and questions you have from this video and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Take care for now.

Now, 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, Mornington Peninsula, Frankston area, South Gippsland, 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.

Also, we have been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program in the past for innovative healthcare companies.

https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator

https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/

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.