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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. We also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units whilst providing quality care for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, medically complex patients at home, including Home TPN, Home IV potassium infusions, Home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), CPAP (continuous positive airway) pressure), home tracheostomy care for adults and children that are not ventilated. We provide IV antibiotics at home. We provide port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, as well as Hickman’s line management. We also provide services for palliative care at home. In essence, we are providing a genuine alternative for a long term stay in intensive care.

Today, I want to answer a question from Lillian in Brisbane who says,

“Hi Patrik,

Do you look after infants at home with long-term mechanical ventilation with tracheostomy and nasogastric tube? My son, Homer, is confined to PICU and we want to take him home. Is this something you do? Is this something that is NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funded? Can you please help?” Absolutely, Lillian. This is bread and butter for us.

We have looked after many infants and toddlers at home on long-term ventilation with tracheostomy, either with nasogastric tubes or with PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tubes, it’s definitely something that we can do. Also, the NDIS is funding pretty much all of our clients for 24-hour nursing care, it just needs to go through the right advocacy process. You will need a good NDIS Specialist Support Coordinator here, which we have on our team. We also have NDIS Specialist Support Coordination on our team.

We will find the right people for you, the right PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit), NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), or ICU nurses that can look after your son at home. We know that it’s very important for you to have the right people coming into your home so that you feel safe, your son feels safe, to provide a nurturing environment, so that gets your son out of ICU and out of pediatric ICU and go home. We are helping you with that transition. We manage and help you organize equipment if the hospital can’t do that, but really the crux of the matter here is that you need the right people at home, compassionate people, reliable people that have the skills and the expertise taking your son home if he’s ventilated, he’s got a tracheostomy and the nasogastric tube.

So, that’s really it in a nutshell because I understand you and your family probably have no quality of life by staying in intensive care forever in the day. The ICU surely needs the ICU bed, and again, it’s a win-win situation that we are providing. Hopefully, your son can also go at some point to kindergarten, and the ventilator and the tracheostomy won’t stop him from doing that. We have taken kids to school, kindy, all of the above, and it’s really important that you get out of ICU, that you can see a world beyond the ICU for your little son.

So, if you need help, just call me on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send me an email to [email protected], then I can help you take the next steps including NDIS Support Coordination if you don’t have a NDIS plan for your son yet. We can set you up with our NDIS Specialist Support Coordinator as well, get a nursing assessment done, help you with all the other evidence that needs to be provided with the NDIS, and then go from there.

Now, if you have a family member in a similar situation, we would love to hear from you as well. If you’re at home already and you have insufficient support, maybe you have support workers instead of intensive care nurses, which is really dangerous and it’s not evidence based, we would love to hear from you and help you go to the next level in your journey and have intensive care nurses at home, especially when it comes to long-term ventilation, tracheostomy and so forth.

We are currently operating all around Australia and all major capital cities, as well as in regional and rural areas. We are a NDIS approved service provider. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) in Queensland, as well as DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider all around Australia. We have also received funding through public hospitals, departments of health, as well as through private health funds. So, please reach out to us if you need help.

Again, if you need Level 2 or Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination, if you don’t know how to get on the NDIS, please reach out to us as well, or if you feel like your NDIS Support Coordinator is not doing their job by not getting you nursing care, we would want to hear from you because we can help with the advocacy. We have done it many, many times successfully.

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we want to hear from you as well. If you have worked for a minimum of two years in critical care ICU, ED or pediatric ICU, or neonatal ICU and you ideally have completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we are currently having jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in Albury, Wodonga on the New South Wales, Victorian border in Bendigo, and in Country Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Country Victoria. We want to hear from you.

Please also note that we are not an agency. We are a service provider that has a tailor-made solution for our clients, and that means we’re really looking for competent staff that want to work with our clients and want to build relationships with our clients. Please only reach out to us if you are genuinely want to work for us, if you are reliable, if you can give us regular availabilities, because we don’t want people coming and going. Certainly, our clients don’t want to have people coming and going. We’re looking for building stable teams for our clients on a regular basis. Therefore, we want people to have a real commitment to our clients and to us as an organization for the work that we are doing.

If you’re an intensive care specialist, we are currently expanding our medical team as well. If you are an intensive care specialist and you have bed blocks in your ICU, which I know you have, then I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED by taking your patients home, which also includes palliative care for some patients at home.

Talking about ED, we are also providing an ED bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District. We send our critical care nurses into the home to avoid emergency department presentations. So, if your ICU or your ED (Emergency Department) is blocked, we can help you eliminate those bed blocks, please reach out to us.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because once again, we can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED.

If you’re a NDIS Support Coordinator and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants or if you’re looking for an NDIS Specialist nursing assessment, we want to hear from you as well.

Once again, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].

If you like my videos, 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, comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have, and share the video with your friends and families.

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.