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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com, where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term, ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. And where we also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units, whilst providing quality services for long-term ventilated patients and medically complex patients at home, including Home BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure) or Home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), Home IV infusions, IV antibiotics and IV potassium as well.

In today’s blog, I want to answer a question from one of our readers from Maura. And Maura writes, “My mom had a laryngectomy about 27 years ago due to throat cancer. Mom is now 72 years old. She has been able to manage her tracheostomy all these years independently because she has been mobile and she has been really living a good life.

But now my mom is in ICU and she will be discharged from ICU in approximately four weeks’ time. But we’ll need an intensive care nurse at home because she’s been permanently on BiPAP and tracheostomy. She also had a double leg amputation below the knee. So we are looking for 24 hour nursing care at home. How can that happen with Intensive Care at Home and how would it be financed?”

So I know from your email that you are in Australia, and currently with Intensive Care at Home, we are operating all around the country in Australia. And how is our service funded?

Well, it’s predominantly funded by the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), by the TAC (Transport Accident Commission) in Victoria, the DVA, the Department of Veteran Affairs, ICare New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), but also from Departments of Health at the time.

Now, your mom won’t be funded through the NDIS because she is over the age of 65. But your mom might have private health insurance. Or private health insurance might have an interest in funding our service and so might the Department of Health because they’re paying for the ICU bed that costs, $5,000, $6,000, $7000 a day plus intensive care units are in high need of the intensive care bed.

So you should contact us in any case to continue the intensive care treatment at home for your mom because she will need intensive care nurses 24 hours a day with the BiPAP and the tracheostomy. And that is evidence-based anyway.

If you look on our website at the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, you will see that the only way Intensive Care at Home is possible is with critical care nurses with a minimum of two years, critical care nursing experience. That’s the only way it’s safe to send a patient home from ICU directly and we can do that with Intensive Care at Home.

We are also the only service provider in Australia that has achieved third party and NDIS accreditation for Intensive Care at Home. You can look that up on our website on the accreditation and quality. So I hope that answers your question Maura. Please give me a call next week or when you’ve seen my email anyway, just call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website and then you can talk to me directly.

Now, as I said, we are currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities. If you are an NDIS support coordinator and you’re watching this, you should contact us, especially if you’re having NDIS participants on ventilation, tracheostomy, whether it’s ventilation with tracheotomy, whether it’s only having a tracheostomy, whether it’s BiPAP, CPAP, ventilation, you should contact us, especially if you’re struggling with getting the funding for nursing care because we know that the NDIS sometimes wants to fund only support workers or only general registered nurses or enrolled nurses for ventilated patients. And that is a death sentence. It’s nothing short of a death sentence because clients in the community, including NDIS, participants have passed away because they didn’t have the intensive care nurse in the home, which once again is evidence-based.

So please contact us. We can walk you through the process with the advocacy view because we’ve done it many, many times successfully for our clients.

If you are a family and you have a loved one in intensive care or if you’re a patient and you’re watching this and you want to go home or you are at home already, but you have insufficient support, please contact us. We can help you with everything including funding. We wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t know how to obtain the funding for our clients.

If you are a hospital or an executive in a hospital or a doctor in a hospital, please contact us as well. If you’re struggling to free up your ICU beds, please contact us as well. We can help you if you are critically care nurse and you’re looking for new career opportunities. We want to hear from you.

If you have a minimum of two years’ critical care nursing experience, we want to hear from you. Ideally, you have a postgraduate qualification. We have jobs currently in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. We want to hear from you.

And if you are an intensive care specialist, we are also expanding our medical team. We want to hear from you as well.

Now, we are also operating as an emergency department bypass service for the Western Sydney area health district. So again, if you’re a hospital executive or an ED doctor, EE emergency doctor and you want to use our service to bypass emergency because we can treat some people at home. We want to hear from you as well.

Now, I really appreciate you watching the video today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home, go to intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send me an email to [email protected].

Also, we have a membership for families in intensive care as well at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team and we answer all questions, intensive care and Intensive Care at Home related.

We also offer NDIS nursing assessments, medical record reviews. Please contact us for all of that.

Now, if you find this video valuable, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Share the video with your friends and families. Give it a thumbs up, give it a like, click the notification bell and comment below what you want to see next or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.