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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: The ICU’s Trying to Push My Dad to LTAC Without Taking Care of His Basic Needs, Should I Push Back?

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

So, today’s tip is about a client that we’re currently working with. They have their 82-year-old father in intensive care after two hemorrhagic strokes  in the last few weeks. He’s now in a step-down ICU, he’s not waking up, he’s still having a tracheostomy. He’s on a lot of seizure  medications or anti-seizure medications, I should say. Of course, the ICU is harassing our client to go to an LTAC (Long Term Acute Care) When I say harassing, that is literally how they feel. The discharge plan out of the hospital is trying to harass the family to agree to go to an LTAC.

As we all know, you can only go to an LTAC if there’s approval from a patient or from medical power of attorney. Neither the patient nor the medical power of attorney has given approval for that. But the hospital is pretty adamant, and it’s almost bullying the family to agree to what they want. In the meantime, we help the family with writing to the hospital CEO, making a complaint, and things have improved from there, but they’re probably still not where they should be at.

The gentleman hasn’t been out of bed since the end of July. We are now in early October. That is negligence in and of itself, he will probably end up with a pneumonia  if he keeps lying in bed with a tracheostomy and oxygen. He’s still on 6 liters of oxygen.

By him starting to mobilize, he’s at less risk of pneumonia. They can probably wean down the oxygen pretty quickly because his lungs can fully expand once he starts sitting up. But, if he’s not starting to sit up, he will get contractions, then it’ll be so much more difficult to get mobilize him. It’ll be so much more likely for this man to end up with pressure sores. The list is absolutely endless.

Also, what I recommended to our client is they need to focus on what they want, not on what they fear. You can never focus on what you fear. You must be focusing on what you want. The hospital will push back, but they will only push back so far because you keep pushing back. You need to fight the good fight here. You can’t be weak in a situation like that. You can’t be weak in a situation like that.

You need to keep pushing for what you want, and you need to keep advocating because if you don’t advocate for what you want, the hospital will get their way. They will get their agenda pushed. You should never give up. You always need to do the right thing for your family member because the hospital may not want to do the right thing for your family member. They just want to get your family member out as quickly as possible, sending you out to an LTAC.  Again, I’m talking about our clients in the U.S. here and you know that if your loved one goes to an LTAC, things will be pretty dire and an LTAC is not even a better version of a nursing home. Keep that in mind.

Keep advocating and you will see that the hospital CEO does not want to deal with the complaint from a family. So, a hospital CEO also can’t ignore the complaint from a family.  At the end of the day, they are responsible for everything that’s happening. Often you, do need to take it out of intensive care because intensive care in this situation has become pretty stubborn. So, in order to solve a problem, you have to find the solution on a different level and the different level here is to escalate it to a hospital CEO level who can’t ignore the complaint of a family.

Never be afraid of repercussions. Always fight for what you want and fight for what’s right. You know t’s right. It’s not right for your loved one to go to LTAC. So, fight for rehabilitation in a hospital where you’ve still got all the team around, that knows your dad, that knows the condition, and knows what needs to happen but at the moment, is too lazy to implement.

Also, this particular client also needs to have their anti-seizure medications reduced so that he can wake up. This can only happen with a neurologist around him, with a neurology team around them. It won’t happen in an LTAC where there’s no neurology team around. So, that’s why it’s very important that you keep focusing on what you want and not on what you fear.

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 hours a day, in a membership area and via email and we answer all questions intensive care related.

Also, I offer one-on-one consulting and advocacy for families in intensive care over the phone, via Skype, via Zoom, via email, via WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to doctors and nurses directly with you. I also talk to you and your families. I advise one-on-one. I ask all the questions to intensive care teams that you haven’t considered asking but must be asked so that you can make informed decisions, get peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams. Again, you should not go into a family meeting without having a clinician on your team that can advocate for you and that can ask all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked so that you can make informed decisions get peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

We also offer medical record reviews in real time if you need a medical record review in real time, please contact us as well. We offer medical record reviews after intensive care if you have unanswered questions if you’re simply needing closure, or if you are suspecting medical negligence.

Now, thank you so much for watching.

If you like my video, 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 and what questions and insights you have from this video, share the video with your friends and families and thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.