Hello everyone and welcome.

We are going live right now. If you can see me and hear me drop a comment in the chat and let me know where you’re joining from today.

And welcome to today’s live questions and answers where we are answering one of the most important questions families ask us every single day. Can your loved one come home from ICU on a ventilator? And the answer might surprise you because yes, in most cases you absolutely can.

My name is Patrik Hutzel and I’m from intensivecareathome.com and intensivecarehotline.com. And you might be wondering what makes me qualified to host a show like this today.

I’m a critical care nurse by background having worked in critical care and nursing for over 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager for over five years in intensive care.

And I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care since 2013 at intensivecarehotline.com and I’ve been starting and founding and running intensivecareathome.com since 2012 and we have changed many lives. We have saved many lives. We have improved the quality of life for patients and families for a long time here at Intensive Care Hotline and intensivecareathome.com and you can verify that on our testimonial section, you can verify it on our podcast  where we’ve done client interviews.

For those of you who are new here, subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Click the like button, click the notification bell and comment below, of course, in what questions you have to today’s topic or what content you want me to create so I can really keep it on point and to the topic here right now.

So we’re talking about two sides of the coin today, the first half of the presentation, and usually I’m going for about an hour. We’re talking about your loved one in ICU on a ventilator, what you need to know, what questions to ask and how to advocate for the best outcomes, and also how to advocate for home care and then in the second part of the conversation, we’re diving deep into evidence-based home ventilation care with Intensive Care At Home, how your loved one can not only come home on a tracheostomy ventilator, but actually thrive at home with community access and a significantly better quality of life than staying in hospitals or in ICU. And that all happens at home, of course, with 24-hour intensive care nursing, because that is really the support that is needed at home.

So before we dive in, if you’re watching this and you have a loved one in ICU right now, or you’re facing decisions about ventilation, tracheostomy, or discharge planning, I want you to know that you’re in the right place. If you have any questions as we go along, drop a comment and let me know your situation and I’ll address your questions throughout today’s session. If we have time, I can also invite you here to talk to me directly. It depends on how much time we have. So to sum it up, if you need personalized guidance, when you have a family member in intensive care with consulting advocacy, go to intensivecarehotline.com where we provide expert ICU advocacy and support for families navigating these complex decisions. If you need home care, if you want to take your loved one home from ICU on a ventilator or with a tracheostomy, go to intensivecareathome.com.

So let’s start with the basics because I know many of you watching this, including the ones watching this on replay, I know we get quite a few views on replay, so want to welcome our viewers who watch this on replay as well.

I know you have a loved one in ICU right now, possibly on a ventilator with or without a tracheostomy, and you’re trying to understand what this all means. What are your options? Can your loved one come off the ventilator? If they can’t come off the ventilator, what are the options? What is mechanical ventilation? Well, when someone is in ICU on a ventilator, a machine is helping them breathe either partially or completely. This could be through an endotracheal tube  through the mouth, could be through a tracheostomy through the neck, or it could be non-invasive ventilation like BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), or CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) with a face mask or a nasal mask.

Now, here’s what most families don’t realize: Being on a ventilator in ICU doesn’t automatically mean someone can’t recover or can’t leave hospital. In fact, thousands of people around the world are living full and meaningful lives at home with ventilation or a tracheostomy support. The critical questions you should be asking in ICU is:

1. What is the underlying diagnosis? Is it acute and reversible or chronic and long-term?
2. Next question you should be asking is, what’s the weaning plan?
3. How is the medical team trying to reduce ventilation support? Has a tracheostomy been discussed? If your loved one has been intubated for more than seven to 10 days, this conversation should be happening.
4. What are the discharge options? And this is crucial. Hospitals often present limited options, but home ventilation with 24/7 intensive care trained nurses is possible and provides far better outcomes.

We have delivered by now over a million hours of Intensive Care at Home nursing with predominantly ventilated and tracheostomized patients, so the evidence is overwhelming. Let me give you a real case scenario.’

We are working with a client at home at the moment with motor neurone disease who was in ICU for four months on BIPAP. So that client doesn’t have a tracheostomy at the moment, but was on BIPAP with motor neuron disease for four months in ICU. Prior to the ICU admission, the client did not need BIPAP, but unfortunately the client had an aspiration pneumonia, ended up in ICU with BIPAP support. And the client is now at home with 24-hour intensive care nurses and lives a much better quality of life. Does have community access, is surrounded by family and has a quality of life that is impossible to achieve in an ICU and like I said, keep your questions coming. If you have any, type them into the chat pad and I would be really curious to find out where you’re watching from. Are you in Australia? Are you in the U.S.? Are you in the UK? Are you in India? Are you in Canada? Are you somewhere else? If you can let me know, that would be great.

So here’s the key thing to understand. Ventilation is a tool, not a sentence. The question isn’t just can’t they come off the ventilator, but also if they need long-term ventilation? What’s the best possible life they can have? And that’s where home care changes everything.

Now, let’s look at the tracheostomy decision. When and why tracheostomy matters? Let’s talk about tracheostomies because this is often a turning point in ICU care and families tell us they wish they’d understood this earlier.

So what is a tracheostomy? A tracheostomy is a surgical opening in the neck that allows for longer-term ventilation support. Instead of a tube through the mouth, the breathing tube goes directly into the trachea through the neck. Why does this all matter? If your loved one has been intubated through the mouth for more than seven to 10 days, the medical team should be discussing a tracheostomy, and here is why. It is number one, much more comfortable. Patients can talk with a tracheostomy. They can’t talk with a breathing tube but many can speak with a tracheostomy, especially if they can have time off the ventilator there are speaking valves available, but it requires time of the ventilator.

Next, a tracheostomy is better for oral hygiene because it reduces infection risk. It is much easier for patients to brush their teeth, to get mouthwash into the mouth. It is much more hygienic because a breathing tube is really in the way for good oral hygiene because the breathing tube is stuck in the mouth. Also, a tracheostomy enables easier weaning. It’s actually much easier to wean someone from a ventilator with a tracheostomy because patients can be mobilized. Not that a patient with a breathing tube can’t be mobilized, but it’s riskier. Mobilization, getting out of bed, weaning off the ventilator is easier with a tracheostomy, generally speaking, especially after the seven, 10 to 14-day mark. Tracheostomy, unlike a breathing tube, enables discharge home. You cannot go home with an oral endotracheal tube the risk is too high, but you can absolutely go home with a tracheostomy with or without a ventilator. And that’s what I’m saying with Intensive Care at Home, that’s what we’ve been doing since 2012 in Australia but I also worked with Intensive Care at Home in Germany way back when in the early 2000s. So Intensive Care at Home is a proven model of care, come, hail rain, or shine.

Now, let’s also address some common fears and common myths here. Many families fear the tracheostomy because it feels like giving up or accepting long-term ventilation, but actually it’s often the pathway to more independence and actually not giving up and it gives patients a lot more independence, actually not less. You have to make a few distinctions here. Let’s just say your loved one is in ICU on a breathing tube and they’re having difficulties coming off the ventilator. And ICU might actually give you two scenarios. They might tell you the first scenario is to give up withdrawal treatment and let your love one die. Take out the breathing tube and let them die. That’s one scenario that I have also seen over and over again in ICU.

The next scenario is do a tracheostomy and then look at long-term weaning or short-term weaning as well or depending on the condition, your loved one might need a tracheostomy for the rest of their lives. It really depends on the situation, but what a tracheostomy is often doing, it’s actually prolonging life and it’s giving people a choice to prolong life if that’s what they choose. Also, again, we’re all about evidence-based here; it’s also about evidence-based timing. Research shows that earlier tracheostomies, seven to 10 days versus 14 plus days is associated with shorter ICU stays. Lower pneumonia rates, better long-term outcomes, earlier discharge from hospital and from ICU, including the possibility to go home with Intensive Care at Home if a tracheostomy and a ventilator is needed long-term.

I also want to quickly come back to, can you speak with a tracheostomy? Yes, you absolutely can. But like I said, that depends on whether you can have time off the ventilator. That’s also a common myth. Let’s just say someone has a tracheostomy. Some tracheostomy patients might need ventilation overnight, and they are off the ventilator during the day, and then they can use a speaking valve to communicate. So many patients with tracheostomies that don’t need ventilation can speak with speaking valves. For example, a Passy Muir speaking valve. They can have the cuff deflated to talk and some patients need ventilation 24 hours a day, then it’s very difficult for them to talk independently, but they can still write on a piece of paper or they can use a mobile phone or an iPad or a computer to write and communicate that way, or can use a communication book. With Intensive Care at Home, communication is a huge priority. Our ICU nurses at home are all trained in any of these techniques to communicate properly with our clients.

Let’s also now look at the discharge conversation. Once someone has a tracheostomy, the hospital should be actively planning discharge, but here’s where families often face roadblocks. Hospitals might say there are no options. They might suggest nursing homes that aren’t appropriate and they wouldn’t take a loved one anyway. They may not mention home ventilation and tracheostomy at home as a possibility. This is not only where expert advocacy matters with intensivecarehotline.com.

We help families understand all their options and navigate these conversations with the medical and the ICU team and then it’s a case of getting them onsite and getting them to help you with the advocacy for Intensive Care at Home if that’s your choice. By the same token, even if ICU doesn’t want to come to the party and thinks that your loved one won’t have any quality of life or that it’s, “In your loved one’s best interest to pass away,” we can help you and we’ve turned many of those situations around because we understand intensive care inside out and we understand and we speak the intensive care language. The secret intensive care language that most families in intensive care don’t understand. So we’ve covered the ICU side, understanding ventilation, tracheostomy decisions, and advocating for your one for what you want, for what they want. Now, let’s shift to the most important part, coming home. I also should say on that note that coming home also includes going home on BIPAP or on CPAP without a tracheostomy and it also includes going home with a tracheostomy without ventilation.

So again, let me just recap here. There are three scenarios, three common scenarios where patients can go home with Intensive Care at Home:

1. Tracheostomy with ventilation. It’s the first scenario.
2. Tracheostomy without ventilation. Maybe a loved one has been weaned off a ventilator in ICU, but is now stuck with a tracheostomy. They will still need 24-hour nursing care with critical care nurses at home because anything less than that is unsafe and people have died with not having 24-hour intensive care nurses at home.
3. Third option is to go home on BIPAP or on CPAP with a mask. And we have many clients at home as well with BIPAP and CPAP ventilation with a mask that have 24-hour intensive care nurses. So if you have any.

So we’re at the point where now we’ve covered what’s happening in ICU, and now we’re at the point where we are looking at discharge, going home. Are there any questions about ICU, ventilation, tracheostomy before we move into the home care segment? If there are no questions, I have some questions prepared that I’ve got coming when I have conversations one-on-one with clients. So for example, we have common questions from clients are about weaning trials, which are excellent questions.

Weaning is the process of gradually reducing ventilation support to see if your loved one can breathe more independently. This should be happening daily in ICU through spontaneous breathing trials. If they’re not doing that, you need to ask why? Sometimes the answer might be valid. Your loved one may not be medically stable yet. They might be on inotropes, vasopressors, vasodilators, they might be on ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation), they might be on an LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device). If that is the case, then weaning will be way more difficult and the ICU protocols that ICUs have might not be able to be optimized just as yet but one point that I want to make here as well is there’s two major goals in ICU. The one is to wean your loved one of the breathing tube without the shadow of a doubt. You need to ask that question. They can’t answer you that question properly again, you need to reach out to intensivecarehotline.com. We can decipher and interpret everything they’re telling you. And so number one, they need to wean your loved one off the breathing tube and the ventilator. If that can’t happen and there are valid reasons, okay. All right, next step.

The other question you need to ask, what are they doing to avoid the tracheostomy at all cost? And again, if there are valid reasons why they can’t avoid the tracheostomy at all costs, then you should be looking at Intensive Care at Home and you should be looking at a tracheostomy as a next step.

Other questions we’re getting quite frequently is about the cost. The cost of an ICU bed versus the cost of home care, of Intensive Care at Home. And I will talk about it in more detail later, but to answer the question very briefly. For example, Intensive Care at Home is funded through NDIS in Australia, it’s funded through the TAC, funded through DVA, funded through other funding bodies, including Department of Health, private health insurance, hospitals directly. But the bottom line here is this: Regardless of the funding body, an ICU bed costs five to $10,000 per bed day, depending on the location and condition, and Intensive Care at Home is probably costing about half of that but I also argue that our service, you can’t weigh our service up in money, our service is invaluable. And again, I encourage you to read some of our testimonials. It is not even a question for our clients where they would rather be. Whether they would want to be at home or in a hospital. And the quality of life difference is incomparable.

So if you’re dealing with any of these decisions right now in ICU and you need expert guidance, again, go to intensivecarehotline.com. We offer phone consultations where we can review your specific situation and give you a clear action plan. We’re also offering a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care where we answer your questions there and do medical record review on a daily basis if your loved one is stuck in ICU. So keep your questions coming.

Now let’s talk about life-changing options of coming home. So let’s look at home ventilation with Intensive Care at Home and the evidence why home is better than ICU and why it’s evidence-based. So we’re talking about bringing your loved one home from ICU on a ventilator and why this isn’t just possible, but often the best option for quality of life not only for your loved one, but also for you as a family, because you can’t tell me what you want, you have no quality of life in an ICU. You’re spending day and night in ICU and you might have needed to stop working. Someone else might be needing to look after your children if you have them, or it’s not an ideal situation. You’re paying for a lot of car parking in the hospitals. You are restricted to old-fashioned, outdated, visiting hours in ICU where they’re trying to tell you when you can visit your loved one, which might interfere with your work, with other commitments. Anyone that’s been in that situation knows what I’m talking about.

So now let’s look at the evidence. According to the evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines that you can find on our website, home mechanical ventilation with or without a tracheostomy is effective, safe, and is associated with a better quality of life compared to hospital or ICU. Much reduced infection rates, no hospital-acquired infections, much improved psychological well-being for both patients and families, better nutritional status, maintaining healthy family relations and other social connections, community access and participation. For example, our pediatric clients, they go to school, they go to Kindy, some of our adult clients are able to work or study. Let that sink in and let’s compare that to a long-term stay in ICU. Think about what this means. Your loved one doesn’t have to spend months or years in an ICU or in a nursing facility that can’t look after your loved one anyway. They can be at home in their own environment, surrounded by family, surrounded by their pets, because I do believe that pets are therapeutic. They can go out to the park, they can go shopping, they can attend family events or family events can happen in their own home.

So who can actually have home mechanical ventilation? Both adults and children with various conditions, such as spinal cord injuries, motor neurone disease, such as MND, muscular dystrophy, COPD requiring long-term ventilation, Post-Polio Syndrome, central hyperventilation syndromes, Duchenne Syndrome, cerebral palsy, Rett syndrome, and many other neuromuscular and respiratory conditions.

If you’re here watching this and you’re potentially looking for solutions for home TPN, yes, we can do that as well, but I’ve covered that in a separate video. I’ll point you back to that side. I think I’ve made a video about this just two or three weeks ago where I talk about home TPN.

Which can be part of ventilation as well, can be if you’re watching this and your family member might be in ICU on a ventilator with a tracheostomy and also has TPN running, might come to the point where your loved one might need to go home with a ventilator, tracheostomy and TPN. No problem.

Anything that I’m talking about today is bread and butter for us. So you might also want to know what does the evidence say about outcomes? Studies consistently show that home ventilation with proper Intensive Care at Home nursing support, 24-hour critical care nurses extends life expectancy in many conditions, dramatically improves quality of life, reduces hospital admissions, hospital readmissions, lowers overall healthcare costs, supports better end of life and palliative care if that is appropriate. And for anyone watching this who is a health professional who works in ICU or for any hospital executives, we are freeing up your most sought after bed in a hospital, which is the ICU bed.

So let’s pause for a moment and let me tell you about one of our clients, a young man with a spinal cord injury. He was in ICU for nearly two years after he sustained a spinal injury and today he’s at home with his family, goes to the beach, he attends concerts, he lives his life. The ventilator and tracheostomy are just tools. They do not define his life or our client’s life. So compare that to a long-term stay in an intensive care unit. They’re not nice places. Now, let’s also address what happens in end of life situations and palliative care situations. And I think it is also an important topic to address here. Let’s just say a loved one is in a palliative care phase or end of life care phase. Home care with 24 hour nurses with Intensive Care at Home still provides dignity and comfort in familiar surroundings. Family presence without visiting hour restrictions. Better and holistic symptom management, peaceful end of life care at home. Many families tell us their only regret is not knowing about Intensive Care at Home and home ventilation sooner when they were faced with end of life or palliative care in ICU.

Now, because of my extensive experience in ICU, but also extensive experience with Intensive Care at Home, one of the most common comments that I’ve heard when I worked in ICU from families and end of life situations was, “Oh, it would be so much better if we can do that at home,” and this always stuck with me, of course, as I was thinking about Intensive Care at Home, setting it up and what do families want. What I also encourage ICU professionals here is to pay attention to what their families actually say, what they want. And again, by taking patients home for end-of-life care, for example, again, it’s a win-win situation. Patients and families want to be at home and the ICU needs to free up their beds. The hospital needs to free up the ICU bed. It is the most expensive and the most sought after bed in a hospital.

Now, another common question we get is about safety and safety at home compared to an ICU. And absolutely, and I will address that very shortly how we specifically make Intensive Care at Home safe and sustainable. Now, let me, just give me just one minute. I just need to take a sip of water, moisten my throat, and then we will carry on. I’ll be right back in 30 seconds.

Okay. Let’s look at Intensive Care at Home and how it actually works. Let’s look at the practical reality of home ventilation care with Intensive Care at Home. So you might be thinking, “This sounds amazing, but how does it actually work? How can someone on a ventilator with a tracheostomy be safely at home? “How can someone with a tracheostomy without a ventilator be safely at home? How can someone on a ventilator without a tracheostomy be safely at home?” I will address all of that, and this is actually also what sets Intensive Care at Home apart.

With intensivecareathome.com, we provide 24-hour intensive care trained registered nurses; not support workers, not general registered nurses, intensive care nursing specialists in ventilation, tracheostomy care, and complex medical needs, trained in emergency response, complete clinical oversight including our own intensive care consultant, regular reviews and care plan updates, and also with obviously our own senior management team with nurse managers, clinical operations manager, educators, nurse educators, and so forth. Sometimes including care coordinators for specific clients, that heavily depends on the funding that is available. Even though I believe all of our 24 hour nursing clients need a clinical care coordinator, sometimes we are still advocating for funding for the clinical care coordinators.

We’re also providing and have knowledge about equipment and supplies. We’re supplying the ventilators that are hospital grade ventilators, but are adapted to a home care environment. They’re much smaller. They still have the same function than an ICU grade ventilator. Emergency backup equipment, suctioning, oxygen, monitoring devices, everything needed for safe care. We’re basically setting up a mini ICU at home. With 24-hour nursing care, it’s a safe option. You’re never alone. You get to be family and not a carer or a healthcare worker because that’s not your skill. Because if you are a carer or a healthcare worker at home, you’re at risk of burning out, and we’ve seen that over and over and over again.

Let’s also talk about the community access support. Our nurses accompany clients into the community. They attend school, work, parks, cafes, shopping centers, family events, medical appointments, but also travel. This is about living life, not just surviving. We’ve been going traveling with some of our ventilated clients, including going on a plane with them, traveling on a plane to a holiday. Intensive Care at Home is an absolute game changer, especially with community access.

This is what I’m saying, not all of our clients have community access if they choose to; and it’s what makes all the difference between existing and living. All of our tracheostomy and ventilated clients, adults and children have community access. Think about that. Not isolated in an ICU room or in an ICU cubicle. Not confined to an ICU. It’s actually living life. I tell you something. One of the ICUs that I worked in when I was still working in ICU, we had what’s called an ICU window. So the highlight for a long-term ICU patient was to get to the ICU window and look down on the street on a busy road. That was the highlight of the day. No fresh air, no natural daylight. And that was the best that this particular ICU could do. Now, compare that to going home. Living your life surrounded by family, going to birthday parties, visiting favorite restaurants, attending school or social programs, attending work, shopping centers, parks, beaches, going on holidays, family gatherings and celebrations and you can add on to whatever, wherever you see fit for your family’s life.

We have a child with complex needs on home BIPAP ventilation, and this child goes to a specialized school, plays in the park with their siblings, goes on family holidays. And the parents say, “We have our child back. They’re not a patient in ICU. They’re our child,” and the child is now thriving at home. So you might also be wondering what about the inflection point where it goes from transitioning from ICU to home? We manage the entire discharge process, assessment while still in ICU and hospital, equipment set up at home, staff training and preparation, coordinated discharge day, intensive support in the first weeks at home, ongoing 24-hour care and clinical management. I know some of you watching are thinking, “What if something goes wrong?” Let me give you some examples here:

Number one. Our ICU nurses are trained in emergency response and we have backup systems and protocols for every scenario. You might be asking, “Can we really manage this?” You don’t have to manage it. That’s the whole point. We manage the medical care. You get to be family. “Is this really possible for my loved one?” The answer is very often, yes. Let’s talk about your specific situation if you have any questions, but here is another very important point.

We follow the evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines that you can find on our website. Those evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines are a direct result of 25 years of intensive care home nursing in Germany and over 13 years of intensive care home nursing in Australia. I’ve worked with Intensive Care at Home in Germany way back when. That was my first experience there, and I brought the concept to Australia in 2012. Should say I brought the concept successfully to Australia because we’ve been operating in Australia since 2012.

But here’s another big distinguishing factor and quality feature of Intensive Care at Home. Number one, we are the only service provider in Australia that is actually third party accredited for Intensive Care at Home. That’s number one. We are NDIS registered, NDIS accredited, and also ISO 9001, 2015. No other service provider has actually gone through the accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. We have the know-how, we’ve got the policies and procedures, we’ve got the intellectual property that is needed to provide Intensive Care at Home nursing.

We’re also employing hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience combined. More than 75% of our nurses are actually having completed a critical care nursing qualification. Now, the minimum to run an ICU is usually about 50%, otherwise you’d lose your accreditation status. We have around 75% of our CCRNs having completed a postgraduate critical care nursing qualification. So you can see there are many layers of safety, accreditation, evidence-based mechanical ventilation guidelines, policies, procedures, skillset of our staff, experience of our staff. I argue in 2026, there’s no other service provider in Australia that can match the level of expertise and network that we are bringing into the community.

All right, we’re coming into our final segment, and I want to make sure I answer as many of your questions as possible. If you have any questions, please type them into the chat pad. And I want to address the funding question again because it comes up all the time.

Home ventilation care can be funded through NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), for example, but also TAC (Transport Accident Commission), DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs), if you’re an eligible participant and complex care needs like tracheostomy ventilation typically qualify for high-level support packages. We can also work with some aged care packages and private health insurances for older adults or care can be arranged privately, of course.

The first step is a consultation where we review your situation and funding options. Head to intensivecareathome.com to get started. Also, we are providing level two and level three NDIS support coordination. We’re also providing TAC and WorkSafe case management. Always keep in mind, don’t worry about funding. All of our clients get the funding, there’s no one out of pocket, really. The reason you shouldn’t worry about funding, there’s processes that need to be followed, of course, documents that need to be provided and the other thing here is always start with the ICU bed. The ICU bed costs five to $10,000 per bed day. Intensive Care at Home is about 50% of that cost. There’s not only a strong human case for intensive care, there’s also a strong business case.

Now, you’re asking if your loved one is too complex for home care, and the answer is almost never. Yes, we care for clients with multiple comorbidities, complex medication regimens, feeding tubes, tracheostomies, ventilators, SPCs (Suprapubic Catheter), IDCs (Indwelling Urethral Catheter), PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) lines, central lines, Hickman’s lines, port management, and the list goes on. In fact, the level of one-on-one nursing attention at home often exceeds what’s possible in a busy hospital because our focus is you and your family. That is our focus.

Let’s also talk about geographical coverage, location question. We provide services across, again, all around Australia, in all regional and remote areas, in all metropolitan areas, of course, location has never been an issue for us. If you’re outside of our direct service area, like I know many of you are watching this in the U.S. or in the UK, please reach out to us. We can help you in the U.S. or in the UK privately. Best thing is you reach out to our website and either call us or send us an email to [email protected] with your specific information.

Now, another question that’s coming up regularly is, how much do you need to do and be involved as a family member? And here’s the beautiful thing you get to choose. Some families want to be heavily involved in care, and we can show you what you want to do with your family member, with our nurse on shift. Others prefer to step back and just be family while our nurses handle all the nursing and medical care. Both approaches work. 24-hour nursing means you’re never the sole caregiver.

Another question that we get quite frequently is, and it’s quite a vulnerable question, but whether home care is appropriate when prognosis is uncertain or limited. And my answer again is absolutely yes. A lot more than you think is possible. Some of our most meaningful work is in palliative care and end of life care at home, being able to spend final weeks or months at home instead of ICU surrounded by family with dignity and comfort. Families tell us this is the greatest gift. Quality of life matters, whether someone has years or months ahead of them.

I’ll give you an example. We had a client a while ago, he was, I believe, a 70-year-old man from memory. He had end-stage lung cancer and he was stuck in ICU on BIPAP, didn’t have a tracheostomy, but was on BIPAP and he did not want to die in hospital. So we took him home, and he spent about three months at home on BIPAP for palliative care. And he passed away peacefully surrounded by his family in his own home. Another thing that most of our clients have in common is they do not want to go back to hospital and who can blame them? Who can blame them? Nobody wants to be in a hospital. So, thank you for making it this far in this presentation, whether you’re here live or whether you are watching this on replay. You’re clearly dealing with some big decisions, and I want you to know a few things. You have more options than you’re probably being told.

Hospitals and ICUs are amazing at saving lives, but they often don’t present all the follow-on, including the discharge options available. Home ventilation with Intensive Care at Home is not only possible, it’s often the best option if your loved one needs long-term ventilation with or without a tracheostomy or needs a tracheostomy without ventilation and actually living life rather than existing in a hospital.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. That’s why we exist with intensivecareathome.com. If your loved one is in ICU right now, go to intensivecareathome.com and intensivecarehotline.com, book a consultation where we can review your situation, get expert guidance on questions to ask, decisions to make, and options available. We’ve helped hundreds of families navigate exactly what you’re facing. And keep in mind, everything that we do is third party accredited. It’s evidence-based, and it’s with hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience combined working for us. So we have a large team that shares information that has insider knowledge. Again, no other organization in Australia has that level of expertise.

Now, if you found value in today’s session, hit the like button, subscribe to my YouTube channel and turn on notifications, share the video with anyone who needs to hear this message and drop a comment below and let me know what’s most helpful, any questions you have. I go live regularly to answer your ICU and Intensive Care at Home questions, so stay connected.

Just on a final note, I’ve worked in ICU and I’ve worked with intensive care home patients at home, and I can tell you the families who get their loved ones’ home, who see them, thrive in their own environment, who watch them engage with life again, those families never regret it. The only regret I hear is that wishing they’d known about us sooner. Don’t let that be you. Reach out to us today at intensivecareathome.com or intensivecarehotline.com. Explore your options.

Thank you so much for joining me today and take care of yourselves and your families, and I will talk to you next week again and during the week when I publish my quick tips. Take care for now.

So, 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 a long-term stay in intensive care for ventilation, tracheostomy, home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), ventilation without tracheostomy and tracheostomy care without ventilation, home TPN, home IV potassium, home IV magnesium, home IV antibiotic, and home IV fluids. We’re providing cough assist management at home, ventilation weaning management at home, central line, PICC line, Hickman’s line, as well as port management at home. We’re also providing nasogastric tube, nasojejunostomy tube, PEG, PEJ tube management at home, as well as IDC (indwelling urinary catheter) and SPC (suprapubic catheter) management at home as well as 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 Area Health District, their in-touch program, saving approximately $2000 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.

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 Veteran 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’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 go from our first case study to advocate successfully for funding 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, who are 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.

Plenty of examples where clients with support worker models or even RN models without ICU experience have died at home and 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, and 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, and 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. They are, 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 bed 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.

This is also why we are providing 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.

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, in Albury, Wodonga, in Bendigo, in Geelong, in Warragul, and also in Wyelangta in Victoria.

If you have worked in critical care nursing for a minimum of 2 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 a tailor-made solutions for our clients which includes regular staff. Our clients also do 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.

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 have to take the pressure off your ICU and ED beds, and 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. 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 (Emergency Department) beds.

If you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. 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.