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If you want to know how we can advocate for you and your family member if your family member needs a tracheostomy and the hospital doesn’t want to give it to you, stay tuned! I will answer that question for you today.

My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies and where we also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units whilst providing quality services for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, also otherwise medically complex adults and children at home including Home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), Home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), home tracheostomy care when adults and children are not ventilated or Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition). We also provide IV potassium, IV magnesium infusions at home as well as IV antibiotic infusions at home. We also provide port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, Hickman’s line management as well as palliative care services at home, which includes ventilator weaning at home.

Today, I want to talk about some of the advocacy that we are doing for our clients and their families. So, here’s the situation. There was a client who has cerebral palsy was on BIPAP at home but needed to go into hospital with pneumonia, ended up in intensive care. The intensive care team was quite adamant that they should just withdraw treatment to remove the BIPAP and let him die. Obviously, the family didn’t want that. He’s a young man with cerebral palsy and has lived a good quality of life to this point. The family reached out to us knowing that tracheostomy might be an option for him, and that if he has a tracheostomy, that life could be prolonged, and quality of life could be prolonged with a service like ours which is accurate.

We have clients at home with cerebral palsy, ventilation, tracheostomy with 24-hour nursing care, mainly funded through the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) and some hospitals simply don’t know enough about the (a) NDIS and they don’t know enough about our (b) service. They don’t understand how it works. They don’t understand that we can actually replicate an intensive care bed in the community for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. So, what we did obviously, we educated the hospital and the ICU about our service and about what the NDIS is funding with the right advocacy, with the right evidence because our services are evidence-based.

You can look that up on our evidence-based section at intensivecareathome.com and you can look it up on the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines which sets the standards in the community, which sets best practice in the community when it comes to long term ventilation and tracheostomy for adults and for children. Lo and behold, the hospital then, of course, agreed to put in a tracheostomy for this young man and he’s been having a tracheostomy and the ventilator since then. He’s living a very good life in the community with NDIS funding.

So, that is how we can advocate for you and your family as well because you might have a family member in intensive care now and you may be wondering, should they have a tracheostomy? Should they not have a tracheostomy? So, you might be talking about withdrawal of treatment, and you go like, “Well, we don’t want that. We want our family member to live and what are the options?” Well, Intensive Care at Home is an option.

We’ve been around since 2012, Intensive Care at Home has been around in countries like Germany, Switzerland, Austria since the late 1990s and I was part of setting it up there and then, and we’ve set it up here now in Australia and it’s a win-win situation for everyone. It frees up ICU beds by keeping people alive without needing to withdraw treatment and letting them die. So, it frees up the ICU bed, it cuts the cost of an intensive care bed by approximately 50%, and more importantly and most importantly, provides quality of life or quality of end of life in certain situations for our clients at home in a much more patient and family-friendly environment.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you’re watching this and you are in a similar situation, reach out to us here at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected]. Or you might be at home already and you’re realizing you’re not having enough support, you might be having support workers for ventilation and tracheostomy, which is an intensive care nursing skill. If you have support workers at home or even general registered nurses because of lack of funding, you should be reaching out to us. We can help you elevate your funding because we also provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination.

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

Like I said, we’re also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination. We are also providing specialist NDIS nursing assessments or any other nursing assessments you might need. If you’re a case manager for any other organization, we can certainly provide you with a specialist nursing assessment. If you are a NDIS support coordinator watching this and you need nursing care for your participants, we want to hear from you. Again, we can also provide advocacy and specialist nursing assessment for you.

We also have sent our nurses and are sending our nurses into people’s homes to provide an emergency department (ED) bypass service. We have done so successfully for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District for the in-touch program there. We have kept their ICUs, their EDs (the emergency departments) empty by keeping people at home by sending our critical care nurses into the home and preventing emergency department admissions.

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

We’re looking for critical care nurses that do want to complement our team and who want regular work because our clients want regular staff, they don’t want people coming and going. So only apply if you’re not looking for agency work because we are not an agency. We are a service provider that provides a tailor-made solution for our clients and their families.

If you are an intensive care specialist, we want to hear from you as well because we’re currently expanding our medical team as well.

If you are an intensive care specialist and you have bed blocks in your ICU, we want to hear from you as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks, for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies in your ICU and you won’t even pay for it.

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

Our website again 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’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. watching this and you need help, please reach out to us as well. We can help you there privately.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families with Intensive Care at Home and intensive care. Click the like button, click the notification bell, share this video with your friends and families, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have.

I also do a weekly YouTube live and you get notified where I answer your questions live on the show and you get notifications for the YouTube live if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel or if you are a subscriber to our email newsletter at intensivecareathome.com.

Thank you so much for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com and I will talk to you in a few days.

Take care for now.