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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My Paralyzed Brother is in LTAC (Long-Term Acute Care) with Ventilation & Tracheostomy, He’s Not Getting the Care He Needs!

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

Today, I have an email from Erica who says,

“Hi Patrik,

My fully paralyzed brother is in an LTAC facility while he fears for his life because they are not properly caring for him. He’s on a ventilator with a tracheostomy.

How can I get him out there?”

Well, Erika, thank you so much for sharing this situation with me and our audience here.

Well, I have made countless and countless videos over the years that nobody should ever let their loved one go from ICU to LTAC in the United States. But again, this is specific for our audience in the United States. There are no LTAC facilities in other countries that I’m aware of.

So, what does LTAC stand for? Long Term Acute Care hospital. Patients from ICU that end up with a tracheostomy, ventilator, PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy), often get discharged to LTAC and it’s always almost to the detriment of a patient and their family, especially since patients get discharged prematurely from ICU. ICUs are not taking responsibility to wean patients off the ventilator and the tracheostomy. Most LTACs can’t take responsibility for it either because they simply don’t have the skills or the expertise to make that happen.

Imagine this, you’re going from ICU with ICU doctors, ICU nurses, respiratory therapists, as they happen to be in the United States and you’re going to LTAC without any of it. You don’t have ICU doctors, you don’t have ICU nurses, your standards of care are bound to drop in no time and that is simply dangerous.

That is what most families in LTAC describe to us, they’re literally begging us to help them get their loved ones out of LTAC back to ICU, back to a higher level of care, and it’s just absolutely shocking every single time.

So, just what you should be doing, Erica? Well, you should be getting access to the medical records. You should be talking to me and then we can talk to the LTAC directly, find out what’s exactly happening. Is there a care plan? Can they implement the care plan? Well, most LTACs can’t implement the care plan for a ventilated and tracheostomy patient because once again, they simply don’t have the skills and the expertise.

So, you should also access the medical records then we have a look at them. We have helped families to get their loved ones back from LTAC to ICU, again, simply through our advocacy, by looking at medical records, by helping families to make this clinical argument that gets them back to ICU. You just can’t go to LTAC. Prevention is better than cure, of course. What happens is you should have never gone to LTAC in the first place.

So, what does that entail? Well, the first thing that it entails is when you have a loved one in intensive care on a ventilator with a breathing tube, and they ask you for a tracheostomy, well, the first thing you need to do is you need to check is that the best course of action? What are they doing to prevent the tracheostomy? What are they doing to wean your loved one off the ventilator and the breathing tube to begin with so that they don’t need a tracheostomy? That’s the first question you need to ask.

Then they probably want to push you towards a PEG tube instead of a nasogastric tube. Do not give consent to a PEG tube under any circumstances. Do not give consent to a PEG tube. It’ll be a disaster because often when patients don’t have a PEG tube and they have a nasogastric tube instead, LTACs can’t admit them. That’s how poor their skill levels are because for a nasogastric tube, you need a higher skill level because you need to do more checks, you need to look after the nasogastric tube much more thoroughly than a PEG tube.

But keep in mind the PEG tube requires surgery. Why would you send your loved one to surgery? Why? There’s enough research and studies out there that says a PEG tube is causing more harm than a nasogastric tube. A nasogastric tube can stay in for up to 6 months. It’s a temporary thing so that your loved one would start to eat and drink again. Whereas if you give consent to a PEG tube, there is the perception in healthcare that people will never eat and drink again because it’s a permanent tube.

So, I’ve made countless videos about this PEG versus nasogastric tube issue. So go and type in nasogastric tube versus PEG tube Intensive Care Hotline and you will find more resources there.

So, what to do? Once again, get access to the medical records and then we can look at them and then we can help you make that clinical argument, getting a loved one back to a higher level of care, which is what your brother needs.

Again, word of warning, if you have a loved one in ICU and they’re trying to coerce you to go to LTAC, put a stop to it. No one can force you to go anywhere. Talk to us and we will help you achieve your goals.

I’ve worked in critical care nursing for nearly 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager for over 5 years and where I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care since 2013 here at intensivecarehotline.com.

We have been saving many lives with our consulting advocacy as is documented and verified on our testimonial section. Have a look there at intensivecarehotline.com on our testimonial section or you can verify it on our intensivecarehotline.com podcast section and where we’ve done client interviews.

That’s why we created a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care. You can become a member, and you can get access to our membership if you go to intensivecarehotline.com, if you click on the membership link or if you go to intensivecaresupport.org directly. In the membership, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in the membership area and via email and we answer all questions, intensive care related.

In the membership, you also have exclusive access to 21 e-books and 21 videos that I have personally written and recorded, making sure you make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence, making sure you can influence decision making fast so that your loved one gets best care and treatment.

I also do one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to you and your families directly. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I handhold you through this once in a lifetime situation that you can’t afford to get wrong. When I talk to doctors and this is directly, I ask all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one, critically ill in intensive care. Also, I represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams.

We also review medical records in real time so that you can get a second opinion in real time. We also review medical records after intensive care in case you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are suspecting medical negligence.

All of that, you get at intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.

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

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If you want to support our work, donate at the YouTube Super chat button or leave a donation there. If you want your email answered quickly in the next couple of days, leave a donation. You can make a sponsored video that helps us make as many videos for families in intensive care as possible. I could barely keep up with so many emails coming in.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.