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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

So currently we’re dealing with a client who wants us to help him to keep his mom in ICU and not go to LTAC since she’s been having a tracheostomy three days ago, and now the ICU team is pushing the family to get their mother out of intensive care into LTAC or subacute. And they’ve done all their research. They’ve checked all the reviews for LTAC and they do realize that LTAC is a better version of a nursing home and no patient from intensive care should ever go to LTAC especially not when they’re ventilated and with a tracheostomy cause LTACs or subacutes simply don’t have the skills and the expertise to wean patients off ventilation and tracheostomy. You can look it up yourself. The reviews are pretty dismal. We have heaps of case studies on our blog at intensivecarehotline.com where you can see what families are saying about LTAC. It’s just horrific.

Anyway, the family is asking us, how can we go about keeping their loved one in intensive care and not go to LTAC. Now, there are a few strategies. One of the strategies, of course, is to talk to the doctors and nurses directly. Find out what’s exactly happening clinically and we will find an angle and we will challenge the intensive care team on the things they have done, also on the things they haven’t done because we understand the intensive care inside out. And we can give you that second opinion that you will need to challenge the intensive care team.

But also other strategies are simply such as continuity of care. Nobody on a ventilator or with a tracheostomy should be leaving intensive care in a hurry, let alone go to an environment where it’s unsafe for them to go to.

Other strategies are simply, a lot of LTACs or subacute are hours away from the original hospitals, which means families are unable to visit, especially now during COVID, with some facilities and hospitals limiting or restricting visitors.

So, there are numerous issues around leaving intensive care and I’m just scratching the surface here. And simply other strategies are, that if a patient deteriorates in LTAC, they will go back to intensive care anyway.

And a lot of patients leaving intensive care, going to LTAC actually do deteriorate. And then they bounce back into ICU and not necessarily in the ICU where they came from, which means they might end up in three different places within days. That is not conducive to a meaningful recovery of a critically ill patient. I’m sure you get the gist.

So, there are heaps of, and lots of strategies to help you advocate for your loved one. But the best way is for us to talk to the doctors directly, find out what’s happening clinically, and then challenge them on that level.

This is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you’ll need help, go to intensivecarehotline.com and call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or you’ll find the numbers below this video on YouTube as well. Or simply send us an email to [email protected].

Like this video, subscribe to my YouTube channel for updates for families in intensive care, and also comment down below what insights or questions that you have and what you want to see next.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.