Hello and welcome to another Intensive Care at Home livestream. I want to thank you so much for joining or if you’re watching this on replay, I also want to thank you.

My name is Patrik Hutzel and I’m the host of this show. What makes me qualified to talk about today’s topic, which is Guillain-Barré syndrome on a ventilator? Can they come home and recover?

I’m a critical care nurse by background, having worked in critical care nursing for over 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager in intensive care. For over five years, I’ve been setting up Intensive Care at Home or was part of setting up Intensive Care at Home in Germany in the early 2000s, and I was part and I’m the founder and managing director of Intensive Care at Home. Here in Australia, we’ve been successfully operating Intensive Care at Home in Australia since 2012.

I’m also consulting and advocating for families in intensive care, and I have been doing that very successfully since 2013. We have saved many lives for our clients in intensive care, and you can verify that on our sister site, intensivecarehotline.com, where we have so many testimonials and also podcast interviews with some of our clients.

Like I said, I’m the Founder and Managing Director of Intensive Care at Home. You can find more information at intensivecareathome.com. We are Australia’s only third-party accredited specialist home intensive care nursing provider for Intensive Care at Home, which means in 2026, there’s no other provider who has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. And there hasn’t been anyone since 2012, so it’s fair to say that right now I believe we are the market leader for Intensive Care at Home in Australia.

With Intensive Care at Home, we are providing tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies at home. We are providing tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children on BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) and CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation, tailor-made solutions for tracheostomy clients at home without ventilation for adults and children. We’re providing ventilation weaning at home, home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), cough assist management at home, home IV potassium, home IV magnesium, home IV fluids, home IV antibiotic infusions, central line, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, Hickman’s line, port management at home, PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tube, PEJ (Percutaneous Endoscopic Jejunostomy) tube, nasogastric tube, nasojejunostomy tube, indwelling catheter (IDC), suprapubic catheter (SPC) management as well as palliative care management at home. We’re also providing Level 2 and level 3 NDIS support coordination as well as TAC (Transport Accident Commission) and WorkSafe case management in Victoria.

Today, I want to talk about a diagnosis that is absolutely devastating for patients and for families talking about Guillain-Barré syndrome or GBS. When your loved one is in ICU on a ventilator because of GBS, you’re terrified, overwhelmed, and bombarded with information you never asked to need.

You are asking yourself:

• Will my loved one recover?
• Will they ever breathe on their own again?
• Can they come home? And in what circumstances?

These are the exact questions I am answering today on this live stream. If you like my videos, if you like the content that I’m producing here, click the like button, subscribe to my YouTube channel so you’re not missing out on any videos that I’m publishing. Click the notification bell. More importantly, share this video with your friends and families, anyone who has a loved one in intensive care with Guillain-Barré or with any other condition in ICU where they need help.

So today I’ll be looking more specifically:

– What is Guillain-Barré syndrome and why does it lead to ICU admission?

– What does recovery really look like and what does the evidence say?

– What is the ventilator weaning process for Guillain-Barré syndrome patients?

– Is home ventilation a real option for Guillain-Barré syndrome, and how does it work?

– How does Intensive Care at Home support Guillain-Barré syndrome patients and their families?

– What funding options are available, including NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme)?

If you have any questions, please type them into the chat pad, or if you are watching this on replay, type them in the chat pad below the video anyway so I can make another video about it. Everything that I’m doing here is user generated.

So, what that means is you keep emailing me, comment on my YouTube channel or on our website, and I will make a video about it. That’s how I’ve been making videos for the last 13 years here on YouTube and on my websites, intensivecareathome.com and intensivecarehotline.com because I want to address what you, the families in intensive care want to know.

So also we’ll be going roughly for about 45 minutes to 60 minutes. Depends on how many questions you have and let’s get in more detail now.

What is Guillain-Barré syndrome?

Guillain-Barré syndrome is an acute autoimmune condition in which the body’s own immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system, the network of nerves outside the brain and spinal cord. The result is rapidly progressive muscle weakness, often starting in the feet and legs and moving upward, a pattern clinicians called ascending paralysis. In severe cases, the paralysis reaches the respiratory muscles, the diaphragm, and the intercostal muscles, and the patient can no longer breathe on their own. At that point, mechanical ventilation in ICU becomes life-saving. Guillain-Barré syndrome is relatively rare affecting approximately one to two people per 100,000 each year, but when it strikes, it strikes fast.

Most patients deteriorate over days to a few weeks and up to 30% will require mechanical ventilation. Key clinical facts, Guillain-Barré syndrome is often triggered by an infection, most commonly Campylobacter jejuni, a gut infection, but also influenza. Cytomegalovirus virus, CMV, Epstein-Barr virus, and in rare cases, vaccinations. The Miller Fisher variant of Guillain-Barré syndrome presents differently with ophthalmoplegia, eye movement problems, ataxia, and areflexia rather than limb weakness.

The reason I want to make a video about Guillain-Barré syndrome in ICU and obviously going home then with Intensive Care at Home is simply whilst I do not remember a lot of patients in ICU when I worked in ICU as a nurse, the ones that I do remember stood out. What I also remember is we have looked after Guillain-Barré syndromes at home with Intensive Care at Home in Germany. So I can take both sides.

I can take the ICU where I know how long it takes for a patient to get out of ICU if they survive Guillain-Barré. It’s a horror trip. I have no other words to say. It’s a horror trip for patients in ICU and going home with Intensive Care at Home is the much better option. It provides quality of life and patient and family-friendly environment. And it frees up the ICU bed, which is most importantly for the hospitals and it cuts the cost of care of intensive care, particularly by 50% by going home with Intensive Care at Home.

So how is Guillain-Barré syndrome treated in ICU?

There is no cure for Guillain-Barré syndrome now, but there are two proven disease modifying treatments that when given early, can shorten the duration and severity of the illness. Intravenous immunoglobulins, IVIG, the cause of pooled human antibodies given over five days, this is the most commonly used treatment in Australia and worldwide. Plasma exchange, also known as plasmapheresis, the patient’s blood plasma is filtered to remove the harmful antibodies attacking the nerves, also effective, but requires specialized equipment and careful monitoring. Steroids alone have not been shown to be effective in Guillain-Barré syndrome and are not recommended. In ICU, the focus is on mechanical ventilation to support breathing, prevention of complications, pneumonia, DVT, deep vein thrombosis, pressure injuries, urinary tract infections, pain management. GBS is often painful with neuropathic pain being a major issue, nutritional support often by a nasogastric tube or PEG, physiotherapy and rehabilitation from very early on. Psychological support being paralyzed and awake on a ventilator is a profoundly traumatic experience.

So, will Guillain-Barré syndrome patients recover? What does the evidence really say?

This is the question every patient and family asks me and it deserves a clear evidence-based answer. The good news about Guillain-Barré syndrome is that it is in the majority of cases, a monophasic illness, meaning it happens once, reaches a peak, and then the patient begins to improve. The peripheral nervous system, unlike the central nervous system, has a significant capacity to regenerate.

So Guillain-Barré syndrome recovery, what the evidence shows. Most Guillain-Barré syndrome patients, around 80% are eventually able to walk independently again. Full recovery can take anywhere from a few months to two to three years. Approximately 20% to 30% of patients will have some residual deficits, weakness, fatigue, pain, or sensory changes. Around 5% of Guillain-Barré syndrome patients, particularly those with the most severe axonal forms may require long-term or permanent ventilation support.

Mortality in Guillain-Barré syndrome patients is estimated at around 3% to 7% with ICU complications being the primary cause of death rather than the disease itself. Let me repeat that. Mortality in Guillain-Barré syndrome is estimated at around 3% to 7% with ICU complications being the primary cause of death rather than the disease itself. So that’s telling you that, especially with Guillain-Barré syndromes, the patients that I’ve seen in ICU have been in ICU for 6 months, 12 months. The longer someone stays in ICU, the higher chances for complications, and the more complacent people might get as well and that leads to mistakes and that leads to client’s deaths.

You should also pay attention that only 3% to 7% of patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome die. What I’ve been saying for a long time here on this channel is that the survival rate in ICU is around, depending on which statistics you look at, anywhere between 70% to 90%, which falls into what the mortality is for Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it goes to show the odds are in your loved one’s favor. Keep that in mind at all times.

So when the ICU team comes with doom and gloom, you can tell them, well, the majority of ICU patients actually survive. The communication need to go away from the doom and gloom to, what can you do to help my loved one survive? So, the key prognostic factors are things that predict how well someone will recover, include age, all the patients tend to recover more slowly.

Speed of onset, rapid deterioration is associated with more severe disease. Guillain-Barré syndrome subtype, AIDP (Acute Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyradiculoneuropathy), the most common form, generally has a better prognosis than AMAN (Acute Motor Axonal Neuropathy) or AMSAN (Acute Motor and Sensory Axonal Neuropathy), the axonal forms. Nerve conduction studies, these can help predict the severity and likely timeline of recovery, whether the patient needed mechanical ventilation, ventilated patients have a longer recovery, but most do recover.

What I tell families is this, the question is not, if your loved one will recover, for most Guillain-Barré syndrome patients the answer is yes, they will. The real question is how long and what does that journey look like and who’s supporting them through it? Also the location of recovery matters greatly.

For example, current perceptions around Guillain-Barré syndrome in Australia, UK, USA, Canada is that Guillain-Barré syndrome patients can only recover in ICU. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, which is what today’s live show is all about to talk about how to take Guillain-Barré syndrome patients home with Intensive Care at Home. Because think about it, like I said, the patients that I’ve seen in ICU with Guillain-Barré, most of them do recover but at what cost? Not only emotional, psychological, the trauma that’s being caused to patients in ICU, but also the financial cost and that is where Intensive Care at Home is the much better option when it comes to less trauma, family, patient, family, friendly environment, the patient family friendly environment, and free up the ICU, but then bring the cost down by 50%. It’s a win-win situation.

So, let’s look at ventilation weaning in Guillain-Barré syndrome, what to expect. Weaning a Guillain-Barré syndrome patients from mechanical ventilation is a process, and it is a process that can take weeks to months, not days. In the early stages, when the patient is most unwell and paralyzed, they will typically be on full mechanical ventilation support. The ventilator is doing all the breathing work. As nerve function begins to return, the patient will start to make a respiratory effort and the weaning process begins. The ICU team will gradually reduce the amount of ventilation support moving through modes like pressure support, ventilation and trial the patient on periods of spontaneous breathing. These trials get longer and longer as the patient’s respiratory muscle strength returns.

For patients who needed a tracheostomy and most of Guillain-Barré syndrome patients that end up in ICU I’ve seen need a tracheostomy, either because of prolonged period of intubation or because weaning is expected to take a long time, the tracheostomy actually makes the weaning process easier because it allows speaking valve trials, i.e. a Passy-Muir speaking valve speaking valve to support communication and swallowing, easier suctioning of secretions, progressive weaning from the ventilator while still having secure airway access, transition to a portable home ventilator when appropriate, also minimization or the complete cessation of sedation and opioids because again, a tracheostomy is much easier to tolerate compared to a breathing tube and mobilization is much easier. Getting out of bed doing physical rehabilitation, doing breathing exercises is so much easier with a tracheostomy.

Now, what is important to note here is obviously that long-term ICU for Guillain-Barré syndrome patients is not the only option. One of the biggest myths and misconceptions I encounter is that a Guillain-Barré syndrome patient must stay in ICU until they’re fully weaned from the ventilator. This is simply not true once a patient is medically stable, even if they’re still ventilator dependent, safe transition to home is absolutely possible, and in many cases, it what is best for the patient.

So, let’s now look at home ventilation for Guillain-Barré syndrome patients. Is it a real option? Absolutely. I want to be very direct about this because I know families are often told, sometimes quite bluntly, that their loved one needs to stay in ICU or that going home isn’t possible while they’re still on a ventilator with a tracheostomy or sometimes it’s non-invasive ventilation as well. Sometimes it can be tracheostomy without ventilation, especially at the end of weaning, but that framing is massively outdated. Home ventilation with Intensive Care at Home for patients with conditions like Guillain-Barré syndrome is not experimental. It has been standard practice in Germany for 25 years now, Austria, and it’s been there for decades. And our evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines that you can find on our website at www.intensivecareathome.com clearly state that mechanical ventilation is a treatment of choice for chronic respiratory failure has been employed for many decades internationally now with Intensive Care at Home services.

Patients with a wide variety of disorders resulting in chronic respiratory failure, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, have been successfully treated at home with mechanical ventilation, both invasive ventilation with a tracheostomy and non-invasive ventilation with a mask by BiPAP / CPAP can be delivered safely in the home environment with 24-hour Intensive Care at Home nurses and with Intensive Care at Home. This is what we’ve been doing for a long time. Financial incentives, patient quality of life and scarce ICU resources all support the shift from hospital to home with Intensive Care at Home, third party accredited, making sure there are 24-hour critical care nurses available at all times. You can read our full evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines here on our website at intensivecareathome.com.

So, what does home ventilation for a Guillain-Barré syndrome patient look like in practice?

For a Guillain-Barré syndrome patient who is ventilator dependent but medically stable, home care typically involves a portable home ventilator, i.e. Philips Trilogy, ResMed Astral, Löwenstein. I don’t promote any of them, but also they are really good ventilators, all of them, connected to the patient’s tracheostomy or mask interface. And I will say, look, we have used mainly the ResMed Astral in most times, in most clients and we have a very good experience.

Obviously 24/7 critical care registered nurses with Intensive Care at Home services presence in the home, not a general community nurse, but a specialist ICU trained nurse because a ventilated patient going home from ICU needs a critical care nurse 24 hours a day, similar to an ICU unit, ongoing ventilation management, tracheostomy care, suctioning, respiratory monitoring, nebulization, giving medications, physiotherapy and rehabilitation support to maximize recovery, regular review by a respiratory physician, neurologist, ICU specialist, also nutrition management either with a nasogastric tube or a PEG tube, coordination with the patient’s hospital team for follow up and ongoing weaning.

Also, why home is often better for recovery for a Guillain-Barré syndrome patient who is still ventilator dependent, but on a stable trajectory of recovery, being at home in their own environment with their family is not just possible. It is often better for their recovery than staying in the busy noisy ICU. Research consistently shows that patient wellbeing, mood and motivation to recover are significantly higher at home than in an institutional ICU setting. I mean, it goes without saying. Also, I can also tell you from experience, most of our Intensive Care at Home clients until they came to us were heavily, heavily traumatized from their experience in ICU and the sooner patients can go home, the sooner they can avoid the trauma and recover from the trauma. Again, common sense.

Now, let’s now look at the Intensive Care at Home option. Like I said, we are the only third party accredited specialist provider for Intensive Care at Home in Australia in 2026, because Intensive Care at Home is not a general community nursing service. We are Australia’s only third party accredited intensive care specialist home nursing provider in 2026 that can actually safely and predictably deliver Intensive Care at Home nursing. What does that mean in practice? We hold ISO 9001:2015 quality management standards. We have created policies, procedures for Intensive Care at Home that are modeled towards an intensive care unit, which is to do it in someone’s home. And we have also developed the intellectual property for Intensive Care at Home nursing. We are also accredited by the NDIS Quality and Safety Commission.

Our audits last year resulted in zero non-conformance as a remarkable outcome that reflects the quality of our clinical governance and our team. Our team is amazing. We employ hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience combined in the community. Our nurses have a minimum, must have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience in a hospital before they can work for us. As a matter of fact, the majority of our nurses probably has a minimum of eight years ICU experience on average, which once again, allows us to employ hundreds of years of critical care nursing experience combined in the community. No other service provider brings a higher skill level in the community than we do. We roughly employ 150, 160 critical care registered nurses across Australia in all major capital cities in all regional and rural areas. Every nurse we place is ICU trained, not a general registered nurse, certainly not a disability support worker, but a qualified critical care registered nurse. You can verify our accreditation status on our website at www.intensivecareathome.com/accreditationquality.

So why does accreditation actually matter? Because when your loved one is on a home ventilator with a tracheostomy, you need to know that the service caring for them meets the highest possible clinical standards. Accreditation is third party, it’s independent, it’s not self-reported, it is audited, and we pay for that and it’s an investment we happily do. I can see there’s so many copycats out there nowadays, but they don’t have third party accreditation. They just talk about something they’ve never done. Delivering it on a larger scale like we do is difficult. What we’ve been doing it now since 2012, and we’ve been doing it very successfully, which means we are getting better and better every day because we’re learning as we go along. So let’s now look at some funding options.

Can NDIS fund home ventilation care, tracheostomy care for a Guillain-Barré syndrome patient?

Yes, absolutely. This is something many families and even some healthcare professionals, including ICU doctors, ICU nurses, hospital executives do not realize. GBS can qualify for NDS funding, even though it may be a temporary condition for many patients provided. The patient’s disability is likely to be permanent or they require substantial support during their recovery period. The patient’s under 65 at the time of application. The required supports are not covered by another funding stream, i.e. hospital system, department of health, private health fund, et cetera, or DVA.

At intensivecareathome.com, we have a dedicated NDIS specialist support coordination team whose entire focus is on securing 100% NDIS funding for ventilator and tracheostomy-dependent patients. We take care of the funding navigation so families can focus on their loved ones’ recovery. For Guillain-Barré syndrome patients who are unlikely to need permanent ventilation, other funding pathways, including TAC, Transport Accident Commission, if relevant, DVA or private health insurance may also apply.

So NDIS and funding at Intensive Care at Home, our NDIS provider number is 4050000298. That’s again, 4050000298. We operate all around Australia and all major capital cities, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin. We can advise on funding options from day one before your loved one even leaves the ICU. For example, another option is to subcontract to a hospital. The hospital needs ICU beds. They’re in high demand, and we can subcontract, for example, through the hospital in the home service there. Or if there is no hospital in the home, we can service, we can subcontract directly to the hospital. We also can deliver services through private health insurance, departments of health. So there’s multiple options. You need to talk to us about funding options. If we didn’t know how to make funding work, we would not exist.

Now, let’s also look at advocacy for Guillain-Barré syndrome families, what you need to know. If your loved one is in ICU right now with Guillain-Barré syndrome, here’s what I want you to know. You have the right to information. Ask the ICU directly, what is our loved one’s current trajectory? What is the plan for ventilation weaning? What does discharge look like? You have the right to a second opinion if you feel the team does not have a clear plan, or if you are being told we just have to wait and see, you’re entitled to seek advice from outside the current treating team. You have the right to choose home if your loved one is medically stable, but still ventilation-dependent, going home is a legitimate option. Do not let institutional inertia make that decision for you.

Medical records access is non-negotiable. You should always have access to your loved one’s medical records. This is fundamental to informed decision making. At intensivecareathome.com my team and I also offer one-on-one consulting for ICU families. We review medical records, explain what is happening clinically and help you ask the right questions and advocate for the right outcomes for your loved one.

So, you can also book a consulting call with me and speak directly with me or with one of our very experienced ICU nurses. We also have a membership for families in intensive care. At our sister side, intensivecarehotline.com, we provide consulting and advocacy for families in intensive care. But today’s focus is on what you need to take away for home care. Because like I said, the Guillain-Barré patients that I’ve seen in ICU are just not nice to watch because I’ve seen patients in there for 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, and it’s just such a waste of time because the same treatment can be delivered at home, especially the rehabilitation part. Think about quality of life. If you’re watching this and you have a loved one in intensive care with or without Guillain-Barré syndrome, think about that. Think about what that would look like at home. It would be so much nicer. It takes a different approach. It takes a different mindset, but the outcome will be so much better.

So, to summarize what you need to take away, Guillain-Barré syndrome is a frightening diagnosis, but it is not a death sentence. For most patients, it is not a life sentence either. The majority of Guillain-Barré syndrome patients do recover. The question is the timeline and the quality of the support they receive along the way. If your loved one is on a ventilator in ICU right now with Guillain-Barré syndrome, please know recovery is possible and for most patients likely. Home ventilation is a safe, evidence-based, internationally established option. Intensive Care at Home is here to support you. We are Australia’s only third-party accredited Intensive Care at Home nursing service, and we are also NDIS registered, and we deliver ICU specialist home nursing service.

Funding pathways exist, including NDIS, and we can help you navigate those funding streams. You certainly do not have to navigate this alone. Now, also keep in mind from a financial perspective, your loved one’s life is so much more valuable than money, of course, but in situations like that, money also talks because an ICU bed costs $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day. That’s again, an ICU bed costs It’s $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day. Intensive Care at Home costs about 50% of that, 50%. So for a $10,000 ICU, but we can slash up by half, probably even more. And there’s an economic argument. Someone who’s paying for the ICU bet right now will have an interest in paying half of it and getting the same outcome. So keep those dynamics in mind.

So, are there any questions? Because if you have any questions, please type them into the chat pad. I can also put the stream yard link in the chat pad. So if you want to talk to me directly, talk to me directly here at the stream yard link, and I would love to answer your questions. If you have any questions, doesn’t have to be related to Guillain-Barré, but if you have any questions around ICU Intensive Care at Home, before I look at a few more nuanced details about Guillain-Barré, I also want to share with you if there are no questions. Tracheostomy is not the enemy. A tracheostomy does not mean your last one is not getting better. It is often a planned anticipated step in the management of a severe Guillain-Barré syndrome patient. Tracheostomy, if anything, it opens the door to home ventilation and to coming home and doing ventilation weaning at home.

So also, when can your loved one go home? So the process typically looks like initially your loved one is fully ventilated in ICU. Patient is too weak to breathe. Ventilation does everything. When nerve function returns, the patient starts making spontaneous respiratory efforts. The ventilation mode shifts from controlled ventilation such as SIMV (Synchronized Intermittent Mandatory Ventilation) pressure control to assisted modes like pressure support ventilation or CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure).

Spontaneous breathing trials are introduced periods where the patient breathes through the tracheostomy with minimal or no ventilation support. These start short and get longer. Capping trials where the tracheostomy is capped and the patient breathes entirely through their upper airway. They come later once respiratory muscle strength is sufficient and then decannulation removal of the tracheostomy happens once the patient can maintain their own airway safely. Once again, this can all be done at home. But here’s a critical point that I want every family to hear.

Stable doesn’t mean your loved one must stay in ICU. Patient doesn’t need to be fully weaned from the ventilator before they can go home. Guillain-Barré syndrome patient who’s medically stable, whose condition is not deteriorating, who has no acute complications, can be safely transitioned home even if they’re still ventilator dependent. The reality is that if they are staying in ICU, chances for complications are much higher. You might recall when I said in the beginning that a large proportion of the patients that die from Guillain-Barré syndrome is not related to Guillain-Barré syndrome. It’s related to complications in ICU.

One of those complications in ICU is a hospital acquired infection. So, the sooner a loved one can go home from ICU to a clean home care environment without any other highly infected ICU patients around them, the higher chances for survival. Because home ventilation allows the weaning process to continue at home in a more comfortable, less stressful, more patient, and more family-friendly environment with support of specialist ICU nurses from Intensive Care at Home. This is not a compromise. In most cases, it is the best clinical decision.

So, let’s talk about home ventilation for Guillain-Barré syndrome patients specifically because this is where I see families being let down, not by lack of medical care, but by lack of information about what is actually possible. Home mechanical ventilation is not new. It’s been around in Germany since the late 1990s, early 2000. It’s been around in Australia since 2012 with Intensive Care at Home. It is not experimental. It is evidence-based, and this is documented at our evidence-based Mechanical Ventilation Guidelines that you can find on our website at intensivecareathome.com. And it’s documented here that Mechanical Home Ventilation as a treatment of choice for chronic respiratory failure has been employed for many decades now in Germany and in Australia. Guillain-Barré syndrome is explicitly listed in our evidence-based guidelines as one of the conditions for which Mechanical Home Ventilation is appropriate, established, and safe. So let me describe what home ventilation for a Guillain-Barré syndrome patient actually looks like.

Let’s look at the equipment. A portable compact home ventilator like Phillips Trilogy, Astro, ResMed or similar, these are not ICU ventilators. Their purpose built for home use, lightweight, battery-packed and designed for safety in a home environment. It can do pretty much anything that an ICU ventilator can do in a hospital. They’re just designed for home care. For invasive ventilation with the tracheostomy, the ventilator connects to the tracheostomy tube, backup circuit, suction equipment, humidification, monitoring, backup tracheostomy equipment, backup ventilator are all part of the home setup. For patients on non-invasive ventilation, the ventilator connects via mask, interface, BiPAP, CPAP or VPAP (Variable Positive Airway Pressure), which is more comfortable and doesn’t require tracheostomy. Our evidence-based guidelines are very clear. If a patient requires ongoing or intermittent home ventilation with or without a tracheostomy, they need evidence-based 24-hour critical care nursing.

Let’s now also look at the nursing because this is where Intensive Care at Home is different from any other community service in Australia and probably worldwide.

Every nurse we place is a critical care registered nurse, ICU trained with the skills to manage ventilation, tracheostomy suction, circuit changes, respiratory emergencies. More importantly, knowing how to avoid respiratory emergencies to begin with because our guidelines and training are explicit any service delivery without critical care registered nurses puts a ventilated patient at risk of dying. General community nurses or disability support workers are not appropriate for ventilator-dependent patients. We provide 24/7 nursing support with critical care trained nurses. That means day shifts, night shifts, weekends, public holidays, continuous specialist care in the patient’s own home.

What are the benefit, once again, of going home? Better sleep, better rest, no ICU alarms, no ward noise at 3:00 AM, family presence 24/7, which research shows improved motivation, mood and recovery outcomes, reduced risk of hospital acquired infections such as pneumonia, UTI (Urinary Tract Infection), MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus), VRE (Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci). Continuity of care, the same nurses who know the patient, their baseline, their preferences, better quality of life, dignity, autonomy, and comfort. Cost-effectiveness, home care at the level we provide is roughly 50% more cost-effective than ICU per patient per day. But here’s probably the biggest advantage, you have a stable team around you. When we select teams for our clients in the community, we make sure they are stable, hand-selected team members that you know, like, and trust.

It’s very important that you feel comfortable with your home team. In ICU, you probably have people come and go and there’s very little consistency, and you are obviously trying to avoid that and who can blame you? Who can blame you for that? Nobody can blame you for wanting the same people over and over again.

Again, the shift from ICU to home for ventilator-dependent patients is not just humane. It is evidence-based, third-party accredited, internationally established and clinically sound. It’s also nationally established with Intensive Care at Home because once again, we’ve been in business and successfully operating since 2012.

So, let me tell you a little bit more about what we do, what we stand for, because I want you to understand why we are different and why that difference matters enormously for your loved one. Once again, we are Australia’s only third party accredited Intensive Care at Home, specialist home nursing provider. In 2026, no other home service in Australia holds what we hold, which is ISA 9001 and 2015, as well as NDS accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing, which means we are meeting regulatory standards, third party accredited. We are employing roughly 150, 160 critical care registered nurses all around Australia and all major capital cities as well as in all regional and rural areas. We have a sound clinical governance framework built specifically for Intensive Care at Home nursing, which is once again, third party accredited. It is backed up by policies and procedures we have developed from scratch that we know are working.

That also means we have built the intellectual property for Intensive Care at Home. And why do I emphasize accreditation? Because the home care sector is largely unregulated for high acuity. Nursing in the community, nursing services that will tell you they can care for your ventilated loved one, but they do not have the ICU nursing skills, the clinical governance, or the independently third party audited quality systems to do safely. Jessica, please ask your question. Accreditation, third party accreditation is not self-reported. It is externally audited, and our certificate of registration is available for anyone to view at intensivecareathome.com/accreditationquality.

We have been doing this since 2012, bringing the model that has been standard in Germany and Austria for over 25 years now to Australian families who deserve the same gold standard of care. So how can we help you right now? I want to be very directly to those of you watching right now, who have a loved one in ICU with Guillain-Barré syndrome or any other long-term condition, or who are caring for someone at home and need more support. If you need consulting and advocacy in ICU right now, you can go to assist at intensivecarehotline.com and book a call with me now, but also book call with me through intensivecareathome.com. If your loved one is ventilator-dependent, you want to explore bringing them home, our clinical team can begin the assessment process immediately, even while a loved one is still in ICU, especially while your loved one is still in ICU.

We conduct a clinical assessment to determine home care suitability, work with the hospital discharge team on transition planning, secure and set up all necessary equipment, recruit and deploy critical care registered nurses for 24/7 home care, navigate NDIS and other funding pathways with you. Once again, contact us at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected]. I started the Intensive Care at Home because I saw time and time again what happens when families are not given a real choice about whether loved one recovers. I saw the suffering of people who spent months, sometimes years in ICU when they could have been at home. I saw the toll on patients and on families, and I knew from what I had learned in Germany and other countries that it did not have to be that way.

That is the whole ethos behind Intensive Care at Home. Every person who’s ventilator-dependent, long-term ICU deserves the option to go home, and this is why we do what we do. And just as a reminder, we are also providing level 2and level 3 NDIS support coordination, as well as TAC and WorkSafe case management. If you don’t have an NDIS support coordinator that can help you with funding, we can do that for you. Now, before I go to frequently ask questions, Jessica, you are asking, how long can a patient be without a humidifier on the safe side time? I think I understand your question. I do believe your loved one is probably ventilated with a breathing tube in the mouth or with a tracheostomy. How long can a patient be without a humidifier on the safe side? Time. Not very long. Not very long, Jessica. I’m almost bound to say not at all.

I’ll give you some examples so that you can understand why I’m saying that. When someone is unventilated, when you and I are breathing, when we breath in through our nose, air is being humidified through the nose. Now, if a patient is ventilated either with a breathing tube through the mouth, either with a tracheostomy or with BiPAP, the BiPAP mask, that natural humidifier through the nose is gone. Okay, your mom has a tracheostomy. Okay. So that means humidification needs to kick in straight away. If your mother has a tracheostomy, Jessica, that means if she’s been through some spontaneous breathing trials, what it means is she might have time off the ventilator. If she has time off the ventilator, they might put on a Passy-Muir speaking valve, which offers no humidification. If they haven’t tried the Passy-Muir speaking valve and they’re just taking her off the ventilator, she needs to go on humidification straightaway as a bare minimum.

So, she should have a humidifier and they should deliver humidification at 32, 33 degrees Celsius all the time.

Now, there is an exception to this. You might have heard of a Swedish nose, also known as an HME filter. They might put a filter on your mom’s trach while she is off the ventilator. Now that delivers some humidification through the filter, but it’s not as good as having a humidifier attached. Bear in mind, the humidifier attached to a tracheostomy without ventilation only provides humidification. Your mom can still breathe spontaneously. Sometimes on top of humidification, it also helps to have nebulizers like saline nebulizers. Now, if your mom does not have any humidification, chances are her secretions are drying up very quickly. It’s so much harder for her to bring up secretions if she’s not humidified, which increases the risk for pneumonia, which increases the risk of any ventilation weaning that has been done, there will be setbacks and then she needs to be ventilated again. So humidification is super important, Jessica. Super important. Have I answered your question? Do you have a follow-up question before I’m going to the frequently asked questions that we get about Guillain-Barré?

Okay. So let’s go through some frequently asked questions. Thanks, Jessica. Glad to hear. I am not a doctor. I’m a critical care nurse. Just to be very clear, I’m not a doctor. I am a critical care nurse. Okay. Let’s go through the frequently asked questions. My husband has Guillain-Barré syndrome and has been in ICU for three months. I say he will need a ventilator long-term. Is home really possible? Of course, absolutely. Three months in ICU with Guillain-Barré syndrome and ongoing ventilation. Dependency is exactly the situation we are set up for. Please contact us at www.intensivecareathome.com and we’ll take the first steps with you to get your husband home.

Next question is, how long before Guillain-Barré syndrome patient can usually be weaned off the ventilator? That can vary enormously. It can be weeks to months. Sometimes 3 to 6 months, sometimes 6 to 12 months also, depending on the form of Guillain-Barré syndrome. The key is don’t wait for full weaning before considering home. Weaning can continue at home. Another question from John is, what if we are in Brisbane, not Melbourne? No problem, John, we are all around Australia. So we have critical care nurses available wherever there are clients. Next question, does NDIS definitely cover 24-hour nursing for Guillain-Barré syndrome? It depends a little bit on individual circumstances, but for most patients, the answer is yes. Our team of specialist NDIS support coordinators can advise you based on your specific situation.

Now, in closing, please ask any other questions you have right now. Before I’m closing this up, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I want to thank all of you that have watched this on replay. I hope that this has given you real practical information and most importantly hope. Guillain-Barré syndrome is a devastating diagnosis, but it is one that most patients do recover from and it is one way going home on a ventilator, if necessary, is a real, safe, proven, and cost-effective option, especially if you’re a hospital watching this as well when we talk about cost. Please reach out to us whether you’re a patient, family, hospital, discharge coordinators, bed managers, ICU teams, you name it and share this with anyone who needs it.

I will see you again next Sunday for our next live.

Lastly, if you’re watching this in the US, in the UK, Canada, Ireland, and you need help, we can help you there privately. Please reach out regardless. We can help you.

Thanks for watching and 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.