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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My Husband was Moved Out of ICU to Subacute & Rehab Being Denied & Pushed by Hospital to Accept SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility)/LTAC (Long Term Acute Care)

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

So today, I want to read out a quick email from one of our readers, from Mona, who says, “My husband was moved out of intensive care to a subacute facility. The rehab facility has been denied. I feel like we’ve been pushed by the hospital to accept a skilled nursing facility or LTAC (Long Term Acute Care). I need guidance. My husband has very high care intensive care needs.” So, this is something we’re seeing every day in our consulting and advocacy practice here at intensivecarehotline.com that families are being pushed by the health care system, predominantly in the United States here. With this particular email, it’s coming from a reader from the United States, and we see this all the time, but we also have a remedy for that.

Well, the first thing is that you need to do your research while you still have time. By the time your husband has gone to subacute or to LTAC, it’s often too late. We have so many families coming to us when it’s simply too late. That again shows that you need to do your research from Day 1 when you have a loved one in intensive care. You can’t leave things up to coincidence.

When you have a loved one in intensive care, it’s like a once in a lifetime situation, but you can’t afford to get it wrong. So, what do you need to do in a situation like that? (A), you need to know your options. Well, the options are no one can force you to go to LTAC or to subacute or being denied rehab.

So, what you need in a situation like that is, talk to us, of course, because we can help you with the advocacy side of things. We break down the clinical issues in intensive care. Most patients in intensive care, especially when it comes to ventilation and tracheostomy are simply not ready to go to an LTAC facility where you go from an intensive care unit, critical care unit with 1:1, 1:2 nurse-to-patient ratio. All of a sudden, you’re going to LTAC or to a skilled nursing facility. All of all of a sudden, you have a 1:5, 1:10 nurse-to-patient ratio and with unskilled nursing staff without intensive care nursing experience and that is doomed to fail like we have seen in our practice over and over again. We have literally families in, begging us to help them to get out there. Well, the best remedy to that is not to go there in the first place.

If you’re feeling pushed by the hospital, that’s why you need advocacy because you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know what to look for. You don’t know what questions to ask. You don’t know your rights and you don’t know how to manage doctors, nurses, and other stakeholders in intensive care and in the hospital environment and that’s exactly where we are the experts at and we can help you with that very, very fast. We have turned so many situations around with our consulting and advocacy.

So, just to illustrate that, we look at the medical records, talk to doctors and nurses directly and then we make the clinical argument, most of the time successful, because we can advocate on a clinical level, why your husband or your loved one mustn’t go to or to a subacute facility. Their situation often goes from bad to worse. Subacute facilities are designed to save money. They’re not designed to provide excellent clinical care.

With our advocacy, we have saved lives by keeping our clients families, family members in intensive care for longer and get the best care and treatment and therefore give them a chance at life and give them a chance of living their life and getting a better quality of life, getting better outcomes. We’re helping our clients to make informed decisions, get peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

Now, have a look at my podcast section here at intensivecarehotline.com. There are some interviews with clients that verify what I’m saying and how we help them.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].

Now, we also have a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in a membership area and via email and we answer all questions intensive care related.

I also offer one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, via Skype, via Zoom, via WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talked to doctor and directly in intensive care, asking all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking like in our example today. Our reader didn’t even know what to ask to begin with because that situation could have been avoided 100%. I’m sure with our help, your husband would still be in intensive care. So, I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I talk to you, of course, and your families directly. We can set up three-way calls with the doctors and nurses, with intensive care teams. So again, that you are well represented and that you have someone on your team that asks all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked.

I also represent families in family meetings with intensive care teams. Once again, making sure that you have a voice on these meetings, making sure all the right questions are being asked and have a have a strategy so that you have a strategy before you even go into those meetings. I’ve been in hundreds of those meetings. I know exactly what they say how they say it, when they say it. I can pretty much give you the lay of the land upfront.

Now, we also do medical record reviews in real time so that you can get a second opinion in real time So, contact us if you want a second opinion in real time and the medical record review. We also review medical records after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you are simply needing closure, or if you’re suspecting medical negligence.

Now, if you’re finding value in my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, comment below what you want to see next or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.

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