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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com, where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, and where we also provide tailor made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units whilst providing quality care for hospitals and intensive care units as well as for our clients and their families. We also provide services adults and children that are not ventilated. We also provide services for adults and children that are non-invasively ventilated such as BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure). We’re also providing services for Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), IV potassium infusions, IV magnesium infusions, as well as IV antibiotics.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

HOW TO USE BIPAP VENTILATION WITH TRACHEOSTOMY AT HOME?

You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:

https://intensivecareathome.com/how-to-use-bipap-ventilation-with-tracheostomy-at-home/

In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is 

How NDIS Support Coordinators Can Help Their Participants with Ventilation and/or Tracheostomy! 

Hi, it’s 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 care for hospitals and intensive care units as well as for our clients and their families. We also provide services adults and children that are not ventilated. We also provide services for adults and children that are non-invasively ventilated such as BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure). We’re also providing services for Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), IV potassium infusions, IV magnesium infusions, as well as IV antibiotics.

Today’s video blog is really actually for NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) Support Coordinators. The reason I want to address NDIS Support Coordinators today is that sometimes we have NDIS Support Coordinator that’s contacting us that want to refer NDIS participants to us that have ventilation, tracheostomy needs, BIPAP, CPAP needs, or Home TPN needs.

Now, then the NDIS Support Coordinators come to us, and they say, “Well, would you have support workers to look after our NDIS participants?” The answer is no, because we are a service Intensive Care at Home. We are specialized on ventilation and tracheostomy at home BIPAP, CPAP ventilation, Home TPN.

Now, it doesn’t fall within the skill set of a support worker because simply those patients are often in intensive care or are coming from intensive care. Now, in intensive care, someone on a ventilator or a tracheostomy or in a hospital, in general, wouldn’t have a support worker look after them. So, why would that be different in the community that the NDIS participants’ needs are not changing?

So, what it comes down to really is providing the right reports and the right advocacy to the NDIS because otherwise we wouldn’t be in business. Our clients get the 24-hour nursing care support through the NDIS. So, what it comes down to is functional capacity assessment from an OT, nursing assessment, doctor’s letter, physio report, and that’s really all it is. As long as you can link it back to the disability.

Just for an example, if someone with cerebral palsy has a ventilator and a tracheostomy and the disability is causing the respiratory failure that leads the participant to ventilation and tracheostomy, that’s when the NDIS kicks in really with nursing care support.

Now, more bluntly, if U.S. NDIS Support Coordinator approve or get funding for a support worker for ventilation or tracheostomy, that is a death sentence, and I am not exaggerating here. Quite frankly because we know of NDIS participants that have died at home on ventilation, tracheostomy because they were looked after by support workers and not by critical care trained nurses.

Now, ventilation, tracheostomy is not even the skill of a general registered nurse. You need to have a minimum of two years ICU experience. Now, if you’re watching this, you’re probably on our website at intensivecareathome.com. There’s a section on our website that’s that links to the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines.

Now, the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines are evidence-based and are a result of over 25 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Germany and over 10 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Australia, with Intensive Care at Home.

Clearly, it’s documented that evidence-based that exclusively critical care trained nurses with a minimum of two years ICU or ED experience can safely look after ventilated and tracheostomy patients at home. It’s as simple as that. There’s nothing to add to that.

Now, with all due respect to support workers, they might have worked in a supermarket last week and then the week after, they’re looking after patients that have been in intensive care the week before. Can you see the discrepancy here between what skill is required? It takes years of university degrees to work in intensive care and the same is applicable for the community.

We know the NDIS wants to take shortcuts, but the NDIS is also responsive to the right evidence and will fund whatever is reasonable and necessary, and also is client choice. It’s certainly not client’s choice to use support workers when they have intensive care nursing skills. Think about that.

So, that is really all I have today for NDIS Support Coordinator.

But you might be watching this, and you might be a participant and your NDIS support coordinator might have told you, you can’t have nursing care. Well, that is simply nonsense because once again, we wouldn’t be in business and our clients wouldn’t be at home predictably if the NDIS wasn’t funding nursing care.

So, if you are an NDIS Support Coordinator and you want to know more about the nursing care funding for NDIS participants, please contact us. We can help you. We also provide our own NDIS Support Coordination, and we have experience with hospital discharges and the advocacy, of course. So, one way or another, we want to work with everyone that can help our clients and can help NDIS participants in need of our specialist service.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service Intensive Care at Home, and if you want to find out once again how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s [email protected].

Please also have a look at our case studies because there, we highlight more about what we can do for our clients and help clients live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies.

If you are an NDIS Support Coordinator, once again, please contact us as well. If you don’t know how to go about funding for nursing care  or if you have participants that need nursing care funding, please contact us as well.

If you’re a critical care nurse and you’re working in intensive care and if you’re looking for a career change, please contact us as well. We currently have jobs in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne for critical care nurses with a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience.

If you are working in an ICU and you know of patients in ICU that want to go home, that can go home, that should go home, and are blocking some of your beds, please contact us as well.

If you’re an intensive care specialist and ICU consultant, please contact us as well so that we can help you manage your exit blocks in ICU, so that we can help you improve the quality of life for patients and for families and you don’t pay for it.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this, please also reach out to us and help you with managing your exit locks.

We’re also currently providing an ED, emergency department, bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District and our critical care nurses manage ED at home. All can be done.

So, we are an NDIS approved service provider. We’re also TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved in Victoria, DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs), as well as iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland). We also provide NDIS nursing assessment. Please contact us for that as well.

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

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service intensive care at home and if you want to find out how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s Patrik, just with a K at the end.

Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies and you can look at our case studies as well at our service section.

Intensive care at home Case studies

And if you are at home already and you need support for your critically ill loved one at home, and you have insufficient support or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you with all of that.

And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse with a minimum of two years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience, and you ideally have a critical care certificate, please contact us as well. Check out our career section on our website. We are currently hiring ICU and pediatric ICU nurses for clients in the Melbourne metropolitan area, Northern suburbs, Sunbury, Bendigo, Mornington Peninsula, Bittern, Patterson Lakes, Frankston area, South Gippsland, Drouin, Warragul, Trida, Trafalgar and Moe as well as Wollongong in New South Wales.

www.intensivecareathome.com/careers

So we are also an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Also have a look at our range of full service provisions.

Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.

This is Patrik from Intensive Care at Home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update.