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My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com, where we provide tailor-made solutions at home with 24/7 critical care registered nurses for ventilation and tracheostomy, where we provide tailor-made solutions with 24-hour critical care registered nurses for BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) and CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation at home, where we provide tailor-made solutions for tracheostomy adults and children at home without ventilation with 24/7 critical care registered nurses, where we provide ventilation and tracheostomy weaning when medically appropriate.

 

We provide cough assist management at home, home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV (intravenous) fluids, IV antibiotics, IV potassium, IV magnesium and other electrolyte infusions.

 

We provide central line, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, Hickman’s line and port management at home. IDC (Indwelling Catheter) and SPC (Suprapubic Catheter) management at home. Nasogastric and nasojejunostomy tube management at home. PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) and PEJ (Percutaneous Endoscopic Jejunostomy) tube management at home, as well as palliative care management at home, as well as Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) support coordination and TAC (Transport Accident Commission) case management.

This is part two of Aaron Reardon’s story, and if you haven’t seen my first video, go back and watch it. It covers Aaron, the Logan father of three living with MND (Motor Neurone Disease), who was refused a tracheostomy at Princess Alexandra Hospital, why the quality of life argument being used against him doesn’t hold up, and also covering our client Ian Haywood as living proof that quality of life with tracheostomy is possible with the right 24/7 critical care registered nursing care. And also, I’ve highlighted last time that Stephen Hawking, the famous scientist, lived with MND with tracheostomy and ventilation and 24-hour nursing care for decades.

 

Since then, 7 News has also picked up the story. Aaron and his wife Rebecca have officially launched their parliamentary petition. And I know from them that about 7,000 people have signed the petition, which I think is a remarkable result given that it’s not a mainstream petition.

 

And the ask has grown much bigger. Now, this isn’t just about one hospital’s decision anymore. It’s about changing the standards of care for MND patients right across Australia. And we are going to fight with Aaron and Beck all the way along, and of course with other MND clients that are in this situation, because if you or someone you love is living with MND or facing decisions about invasive ventilation with tracheostomy, non-invasive ventilation with BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) or CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), or even palliative care, here’s what’s changed since part one and what you can do.

 

And just to clarify here, we’re advocating for a tracheostomy for MND clients that want a tracheostomy. There are clients or patients who don’t want a tracheostomy, and that needs to be respected too. It’s all about choice and control here. It’s not about imposing a tracheostomy on someone that doesn’t want a tracheostomy, but this video is about choice and control for MND clients.

 

So what is new in Aaron’s fight? Aaron Reardon had requested a tracheostomy because MND was causing him increasing breathing difficulties. A tracheostomy allows a patient to breathe through an opening in the throat instead of relying solely on the nose and mouth, and it can add years to a patient’s life. In Stephen Hawking’s case in the UK, it added decades to his life.

Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane refused, stating that an elective tracheostomy for permanent invasive ventilation in MND patients is not standard clinical practice in Australia, and pointing to significant risks without, in the hospital’s view, sufficient evidence of improved quality of life.

 

Aaron and Rebecca haven’t stopped there. They have now formally launched their petition to the Queensland Parliament asking for the Australian standard of care to change, so tracheostomy ventilation is offered to MND patients who want it. Rebecca has been upfront that this fight won’t change the outcome for Aaron himself in time, but she and Aaron see it as the legacy he leaves, paving the way so other families don’t have to go through the same thing.

 

Let’s look at the voices behind the campaign. The 7 News report also featured Andy Taylor from Newmarket, who traveled to London for the same procedure Aaron was refused in Brisbane, Australia.

 

Andy says the tracheostomy has given him something close to a normal life expectancy, and that being able to directly suction mucus out of his lungs, something a non-invasive mask simply can’t do, is, in his view, a big part of why two people a day in Australia die from MND. That is extremely sad, that two people a day in Australia die from MND. We should all listen to that, and we should all try and prevent that.

 

Stacey Thorpe, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of MND Queensland, made a point that echoes exactly what I said in my last video. Australia offers voluntary assisted dying as a pathway for people with terminal illnesses, but there’s no equivalent pathway, no equivalent choice, for MND patients who want life-extending invasive ventilation with a tracheostomy instead.

 

That imbalance is the whole problem in one sentence. We have built a legal, funded pathway to help people end their lives sooner, but not a funded, resourced pathway to help them live longer if that is what they want. If we don’t think there’s something wrong here fundamentally, I think we have a big problem.

 

And here is why this needs to become a national standard of care issue, not just a Queensland one. I said this when Aaron’s story first broke, and I’ll say it again. The reasoning being used to deny him this surgery doesn’t hold up against decades of international clinical evidence. I trained and worked as a critical care registered nurse in Germany and the UK before coming to Australia, where tracheostomy ventilation for MND patients supported at home by 24/7 critical care registered nurses has been standard practice since the late 1990s.

 

That is not a fringe approach. It’s a well-established, well-researched and evidence-based model of care, and it’s proven by patients like Professor Stephen Hawking, who had a tracheostomy in 1985 and was able to live with MND for 55 years.

 

The problem isn’t that tracheostomy ventilation doesn’t work. The problem is that Australia’s health system isn’t set up, funded or resourced to deliver the 24/7 critical care registered nurse model that makes it work safely at home.

When a hospital ethics committee looks at a tracheostomy purely through the lens of hospital-based or generic support worker care, of course the risk profile looks worse than it should. The real evidence-based comparison is tracheostomy ventilation plus 24/7 critical care registered nurses at home, not tracheostomy ventilation plus inadequate support or long-term ICU (Intensive Care Unit) hospital stays.

 

Let’s now look at building the medical evidence to back a request like Aaron’s. One thing I want families in this situation to understand: decisions like the one Princess Alexandra Hospital made are rarely overturned by emotion alone. They’re overturned, or avoided altogether, with strong, documented clinical evidence of what quality of life with a tracheostomy and 24/7 CCRN (Critical Care Registered Nurse) support actually looks like. This is exactly the kind of nursing assessment and clinical documentation work we do every day for clients navigating NDIS, TAC, WorkSafe and DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) funding decisions, and it’s just as relevant when a family is trying to demonstrate to a hospital multidisciplinary team that a tracheostomy backed by the right nursing model is a safe and viable option.

 

If you’re preparing to make this case for yourself or a family member, don’t go in with hope alone. Hope is not a strategy. While it helps, it’s not a strategy alone. Go in with documented evidence, a clear ventilation and airway management plan, a staffing model built around 24/7 critical care registered nurses with Intensive Care at Home rather than with general registered nurses, enrolled nurses and support workers, and case studies of patients who are living full lives with a tracheostomy at home, such as Ian Haywood, who has been the longest-living tracheostomy MND client in Australia since 2019.

And if you’re weighing up decisions about mechanical ventilation at home, invasive ventilation with tracheostomy, non-invasive ventilation with BiPAP or CPAP, or tracheostomy care without ventilation, read our evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines. It’s exactly the kind of information you need before sitting down with the hospital’s multidisciplinary team, or before you lodge a submission with the NDIS, or even with the Aged Care Commission, or even with your private health funds if you have private health insurance.

 

Also, if you’re a Queensland resident, sign Aaron’s petition now. Aaron and Rebecca’s petition to the Queensland Parliament is live right now, and it’s asking for exactly what I’ve been arguing for many years here on my channel: the right for MND patients to choose tracheostomy ventilation, the right for MND patients to extend life, and support for clinicians to make consistent, evidence-informed decisions about life-prolonging care.

 

Sign the petition to the Queensland Parliament here. I’ll put the link into the show notes. It takes 2 minutes. Please share it as well. The more signatures, the harder it is for the government to look away, and the more likely this becomes the national conversation it needs to be.

 

So here’s what you also might want to know about Intensive Care at Home, and why choose Intensive Care at Home in a situation like that. In 2026, we are Australia’s only third-party accredited specialist home ICU nursing provider, ISO 9001:2015 certified and NDIS registered for Intensive Care at Home nursing. You can see the details on our accreditation and quality standards on our website. We provide 24/7 critical care registered nurses for invasive ventilation with tracheostomy, non-invasive ventilation with BiPAP, CPAP, tracheostomy care without ventilation, amongst other things that go hand in hand with it, and all of that we provide with 24/7 critical care registered nurses. We also provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination, and TAC and WorkSafe case management, and we help families build the clinical documentation and nursing assessments that stand up to scrutiny from hospitals, the NDIS and other funding bodies. This is the same 24/7 CCRN model that has supported our long-term MND client Ian Haywood, who I believe currently is the longest-living MND client in Australia with tracheostomy since 2019, proving that with the right level of 24/7 critical care registered nursing, quality of life with a tracheostomy is not just possible, it’s achievable long term.

 

Here’s the bottom line. Since part one, that I’ve linked to in the show notes, about Aaron Reardon’s fight, he has gone from a family’s personal battle to a national conversation about how Australia treats MND patients who want to live longer. The evidence from Germany, the example of Stephen Hawking, and the lived reality of clients like Ian Haywood or Andy Taylor all point the same way. Tracheostomy ventilation for MND, backed by 24/7 critical care registered nursing care at home, works. What’s missing is not the clinical evidence. It’s the political will to fund the nursing model that makes it possible.

 

Subscribe to my YouTube channel and sign up for our email list at intensivecareathome.com so you don’t miss any other updates about Aaron’s case and other cases. If you haven’t already done so, please sign Aaron Reardon’s petition to the Queensland Parliament. If you’re a family member who needs help building the clinical case for 24/7 critical care registered nursing home care, whether that’s for MND, NDIS, WorkSafe, DVA, etc., call me on one of the numbers on the top of our website at intensivecareathome.com. Book a call with me there through the schedule appointment button, or send me an email to [email protected].

My mobile phone number is 041 0942230.

 

Take care for now.

 

With all of that said, with Intensive Care at Home, we are currently sending our critical care nurses into the home 24 hours a day. Therefore, we are providing a genuine alternative to long-term stay in intensive care for:

• Ventilation
• Tracheostomy
• Home BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) and CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure)
• Tracheostomy care without ventilation
• home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition)
• Home IV potassium
• Home IV magnesium
• Home IV antibiotics
• Home IV fluids

We’re providing:

• Cough assist management at home
• Ventilation weaning management at home
• central line, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, Hickman’s line as well as port management at home
• nasogastric tube, nasojejunostomy tube, PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy), PEJ (Percutaneous Endoscopic Jejunostomy) tube management at home
• IDC (Indwelling Catheter) and SPC (Suprapubic Catheter) management at home
• Palliative care services at home

 

We’re also sending our critical care nurses into the home for emergency department bypass services. We have done so successfully as part of the Western Sydney Local Health District’s In Touch program, saving approximately $2,000 per patient that we keep at home instead of them going into an emergency department.

 

That also means we’re in a position to cut the cost of an ICU bed by around 50%. An intensive care bed costs between $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day depending on location. Intensive Care at Home costs approximately 50% of that, and we’re freeing up the most sought-after bed in the hospital, which is the ICU bed. Most importantly, we’re improving the quality of life for patients and their families, which is a win-win situation for all stakeholders.

 

Our Coverage and Accreditation

With Intensive Care at Home, we’re currently operating all around Australia, in all major capital cities, as well as in all regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS approved service provider all around Australia, TAC (Transport Accident Commission) and WorkSafe in Victoria as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs all around Australia.

 

We’re also ISO 9001:2015 accredited. Our clients and we as a service provider have also received funding through public hospitals, private health funds as well as departments of health.

 

We are the only service provider in Australia that has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing in 2025. We have been achieving this high level of accreditation since 2012. No other provider in Australia has achieved the Intensive Care at Home level of accreditation in the community and has created more intellectual property when it comes to Intensive Care at Home nursing than we have.

 

This puts us in a position to employ hundreds of years of critical care nursing experience combined in the community. No other service provider in 2025 employs a higher skill level in the community than we do. And that enables us to look after the highest acuity adults and children in the community in Australia safely.

 

If You Need Help

If you’re at home already and you’re watching this or you’re stuck in an ICU and you realize that you don’t have the right level of support, I can give you many examples where we helped clients with funding, how we advocate for funding. We had to advocate successfully for funding from our first case study to many other case studies where we had to advocate successfully for funding with the right evidence of course because it is crystal clear that disability support workers for example or registered nurses without ICU experience cannot look after ventilated clients at home whether adults or children with or without a tracheostomy and it’s simply dangerous and negligent.

 

There are plenty of examples where clients with support worker models or even RN (registered nurse) models without ICU experience have died at home and I have evidence to back up everything that I’m saying here because it’s a bit like flying the airplane with a cabin crew instead of the pilot and it could simply be deadly.

 

This can be avoided by having simply 24-hour critical care nurses at home because our clients are at high risk of medical emergencies or worse without critical care nurses 24 hours. This is actually also evidence-based in the community and is documented in our evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines on our website at intensivecareathome.com.

Think about it: in an intensive care unit in a hospital, you wouldn’t have support workers or general registered nurses looking after a critical care patient on a ventilator with a tracheostomy. So why would anyone in their right mind do that in a home care environment where there are fewer resources?

 

Clients that have found us have been at home long-term predictably and permanently with critical care nurses. Their alternative would have been to either die or stay in ICU long-term, and our clients don’t go back to ICU. They stay at home permanently and predictably and the insurance bodies save half of the cost of an ICU. But it’s a win-win situation all around.

 

We can do the same for you if you’re stuck in ICU or if you’re not safe at home, which includes the advocacy for funding and the network that goes along with it. We have always successfully advocated for our clients or we have the network to successfully advocate for you and for your family member, otherwise we wouldn’t be in business. The same again is applicable for those stuck in an ICU which is similar to many of our, if not most of our cases.

 

Our Support Coordination Services

This is also why we are providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination. We have a team of experienced NDIS support coordinators, and they have a wealth of knowledge. We’re also providing TAC case management and WorkSafe case management in Victoria with Lucy McCotter.

 

If you’re an NDIS support coordinator or a case manager or a social worker from another organization or a hospital watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, please reach out to us as well. If you’re looking for funding for nursing care for your participants and you don’t know how to go about it and how to advocate for it, what evidence to provide, I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We have the network to make that happen. We will help you with the right level of funding and with the right level of advocacy.

 

We’re also providing NDIS specialist nursing assessments done by critical care nurses with a legal nurse consulting background.

 

Join Our Team

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change and you want to join a very progressive, dynamic, successful, and high-performing team of critical care nurses in the community, we are employing hundreds of years of critical care nursing experience combined.

 

If you’re looking for a career change, we’re currently hiring for jobs for critical care nurses in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Albury-Wodonga, Bendigo, Geelong, Warragul, and also in Wyelangta in Victoria.

 

If you have worked in critical care nursing for a minimum of two years, adult ICU, pediatric ICU, ED and you have already completed a postgraduate critical care nursing qualification, we will be absolutely delighted hearing from you.

I have a disclaimer though: Because we are offering tailor-made solutions for our clients which includes regular staff, our clients do also want the same staff coming over and over again because they are so vulnerable and so special. That’s why we need regular, reliable staff.

 

If you’re looking for agency work where you can come and go, this will not be the right fit for you. We’re looking for consistency and our clients are looking for consistency. So please only apply with us if you can give us regular and consistent availabilities for shifts and you’re really keen on building relationships with us and with our clients. Reliability is also a must.

 

For Medical Professionals and Healthcare Executives

If you’re an intensive care specialist or an ED specialist, we also want to hear from you. We’re currently expanding our medical team as well.

 

We can also help you eliminate your bed blocks in your ICU and in your ED for your long-term patients or for your regularly readmitting patients with our critical care nursing team at home. We’re here to help to take the pressure off your ICU and ED beds. In most cases, you won’t even pay for it. Even if you do pay for it, it is so much more cost-effective than what you’re paying for in ICU and ED settings, and you get the same level of care and simply more patient and family satisfaction because you also want to partner with your consumers.

If you are a hospital executive watching this, we can help you free up your ICU and ED beds.

 

International Support

If you’re in the U.S. or in the UK and you’re watching this and you need help, we want to hear from you as well. We can help you there privately with one-on-one consulting and with hiring nurses privately.

 

Once again, our website is intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].

 

If you like my videos, click the like button, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families with Intensive Care at Home and intensive care. Click the like button, click the notification bell, and share this video with anyone who has a family member in intensive care long-term or needs to see this.

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.