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When Should Your Loved One Go to LTAC from ICU? Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care! 

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

So, today’s tip is about, “When should families in intensive care let their loved one go to LTAC (long-term acute care)?” And this is a video for our audience in the U.S. because our other viewers and clients are usually in the U.K., Australia, or Canada. There are no LTACs in those countries. So, LTAC is specific to the U.S. Sometimes it’s also referred to as skilled nursing facility (SNF) or also a subacute.

So again, coming back to our original question, “When should you let your loved one go to long-term acute care or SNF or subacute?” Well, you can guess the answer. The answer is never. Never, ever. Go in your area and type in the LTACs in your area and look up the online reviews. Look up the online reviews and they’re pretty bad. They’re pretty bad and I’m not surprised by it.

We’ve been working with clients in long-term acute care facilities for many years in the U.S. and for lack of a better term, it’s a disaster area. Patients from ICU go to LTAC and it’s like a critically ill patient with a tracheostomy  and a PEG (percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy) tube going to LTAC. And LTAC is the better version of a nursing home, but it’s only marginally better version of a nursing home. And you can’t go from intensive care where you have the most highly skilled health professionals in a hospital like intensive care doctors, intensive care nurses, respiratory therapists to a nursing home, that’s the definition of insanity. And the ICU will “sell you” that in LTAC, your loved one will get weaned off a ventilator. Well, your loved one will wither away in LTAC. That’s the reality. That is what’s happening in LTAC.

And before you even entertain the thought of letting your loved one go to an LTAC, have a look for yourself. Go to an LTAC, visit them, ask them for references, ask them to let you talk to their clients and to their families and see whether they will let you do that. Get their response.

So, what’s the alternative? Well, the alternative is to stay in intensive care and let the professionals that actually are really qualified to let your loved one get off a ventilator and let them do the work because they actually know how to do it. They’re actually qualified to do it. You’re going basically from intensive care with highly skilled, ventilator competent, and tracheostomy-competent staff to LTAC where none of them are ventilation or tracheostomy competent. You’re going from intensive care where you have multiple doctors and nurses, 24 hours a day to LTAC, where you have no doctors onsite often, no intensive care nurses onsite. It’s like going into the dungeon. It’s like absolute nightmare.

Now, LTAC exists to save money. They’re not designed for clinical need. Let me repeat that. LTACs are not designed for clinical need. They’re designed to save money and they’re designed to empty intensive care beds pretty quickly without actually having the expertise on the other end to make that really happen because that’s the other issue. A lot of patients in LTAC bounce back to ICU pretty quickly.

So, the alternative is to stay in intensive care for longer periods of time, which we have helped so many clients to achieve. Because again, we are specialized on professional advocacy and consulting for families in intensive care, and we know about patient and family rights. When it comes to prolong your stay or your loved ones stay in intensive care, we can make that argument clinically.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

And be before I close this, one more thing. Do not give consent to a PEG when you’re in ICU. Do not give consent to a PEG tube. You can leave a nasogastric tube in. We leave that in for up to six months, assuming your loved one is not going to pull out the tube.

So, that’s my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, 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].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team, 24/7, in a membership area and via email, where we answer all questions intensive care related, 24 hours a day.

Also, if you want a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care or after intensive care, we review medical records while families have loved ones in intensive care or after intensive care, especially if you suspect medical negligence, contact us as well.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel  for regular updates for families in intensive care, share the video with your friends and families, give it a like, click the notification bell, and comment below your questions and insights from this video.

Thanks for watching.

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

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