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Hi it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME where we provide tailor made solutions for long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomies by improving their Quality of life and where we also provide tailor made solutions to hospitals and Intensive Care Units to save money and resources, whilst providing Quality Care!

In the last blog I talked about

When will politicians recognise the value of INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME?

You can check out last week’s episode by clicking on the link here.

In this week’s blog, I want to share an article from the Herald-sun about one of our clients this week!

Bureaucrats withdraw funds for disabled girl’s private nurse on same day she saved her life!

On Wednesday February 14^th, 2018 the Herald-sun’s health editor Grant McArcthur published an article about one of our clients.

The Department of health in Victoria and some of their respective bureaucrats made a big blunder by announcing to one of our clients that the life saving funding for our nursing service would be withdrawn on the very day one of our amazing ICU nurses saved our client’s life.

This is on the background of DHHS wanting to delegate more and more responsibility on to the NDIS(National disability insurance scheme).

Unfortunately the NDIS scheme allows no funding for Registered Nurses, let alone for Intensive Home Care nursing, as the NDIS is not designed to fund Intensive Home Care nursing, which is what our clients and anybody with medically complex issues needs to keep them out of Intensive Care safely.

To make the situation worse, by trying to delegate more and more of the funding responsibilities to the NDIS, DHHS is risking lives as the article bellow will show.

DHHS has also in the past funded support workers for a toddler with tracheostomy and regular seizures as a money saving exercise which cost the life of an innocent toddler not too long ago.

The toddler died because the child was looked after by a non-accredited service provider and by support workers instead of Intensive Care nurses, because support workers couldn’t manage a medical emergency which ultimately led to the toddler’s death.

Anybody with a tracheostomy and/or seizures at home or with any other complex needs must looked after by an accredited service provider like INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME.

DHHS puts saving money in front of saving lives! Moreover, DHHS doesn’t care about quality and opens the doors for cheap and non-accredited service providers, letting support workers look after vulnerable children with tracheostomies who need ICU nurses instead.

As the article below shows, without our skills and experience our client would have died on the day when DHHS announced that funding would be withdrawn.

Lives don’t seem to matter to DHHS!

Bureaucrats withdraw funds for disabled girl’s private nurse on same day she saved her life

GRANT McARTHUR, HEALTH EDITOR, Herald Sun

February 13, 2018 8:00pm

Subscriber only

AN in-home nurse looking after a severely disabled 13-year-old girl helped save her life just hours after bureaucrats told the family they would no longer pay for the nursing care.

Last week, Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services told Indiana Phillips’s family the $900,000 publicly funded intensive care nursing was being withdrawn.

Hours later on Thursday, the South Gippsland teenager, who has the genetic neurological disorder Rett syndrome, suffered a serious seizure and a cardiac arrest.

Her nurse and paramedics saved her life, and she was flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital, where she was put on life support.

Indiana Phillips with nurse Kris Good.

The complications Indiana suffers worsened mid last year.

Her father, Michael, said: “She is progressing well and it looks like there has been no brain damage, which is due to the actions of the nurse and ambos who saved her. If it had been just me there, it would have been a different story.”

While she is hoped to recover from her latest life-threatening incident, Indiana’s father Michael Phillips has grave fears for her future as well as other severely disabled Australians being placed on the NDIS.

The complications Indiana suffers worsened mid last year, and the DHHS agreed she needed a 20-hour-a-day intensive care nursing service.

But as Indiana’s care was being shifted to the National Disability Insurance Scheme the family discovered the NDIS would not provide the nursing service.

And last week the DHHS said the service was being withdrawn because it had been an “incorrect allocation” of Victorian funds.

Indiana Phillips.

“I think DHHS has been told to push all individual support packages over to the NDIS … so they are trying to push us over now, so they can wipe their hands of us,” Mr Phillips said.

“In the meantime I have a child who is fighting for life … she may only be alive for another week, or tomorrow may be her last day. And here I am, on the phone trying to shore up funding, rather than enjoying the time I have with her.”

After being contacted by the Herald Sun this week, the DHHS began reviewing Indiana’s case. And on Tuesday, it reversed its decision.

Disability Minister Martin Foley also called the family to apologise and to promise that Indiana would be cared for.

Departmental staff believe an error was made in the transition to the NDIS.

A DHHS acting deputy secretary, Danny O’Kelly, confirmed the department would pay for Indiana’s nursing care while her longer-term needs under the NDIS were assessed.

“The department apologises to the family for any distress and confusion this has caused,” he said.

[email protected]

If you want to find out how we can help you to get your loved one out of Intensive Care including palliative care or Long-term acute care(also nursing home) or if you find that you have insufficient support for your loved one at home on a ventilator, if you want to know how to get funding for our service or if you have any questions please send me an email to [email protected] or call on one of the numbers below.

Australia/New Zealand +61 41 094 2230

USA/Canada +1 415-915-0090

UK/Ireland +44 118 324 3018

Also, check out our careers section here

www.intensivecareathome.com/careers

We are currently hiring ICU/PICU nurses for clients in Melbourne, Sunbury and in South Gippsland/Victoria.

We are an NDIS, TAC(Victoria) and DVA(Department of Veteran affairs) approved community service provider in Australia.

We have also been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program for innovative health care companies earlier this year!

https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator

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Thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.

This is Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME and I see you again next week in another update!