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If you want to know what are alternatives to organ donation in intensive care, stay tuned. I’ve got news for you.

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

We are also sending our critical care nurses into the home for emergency department bypass services. We have done so successfully to the Western Sydney Local Area Health District, their in-touch program.

In essence, we’re saving 50% of the cost of an intensive care bed whilst drastically improving the quality of life for our clients and their families. We’re saving roughly $2,000 for the cost of an ED admission by providing the ED bypass service at home.

Now, in today’s video, I want to actually talk about some of our clients who were in ICU before we took them home with Intensive Care at Home. Here are some of their stories, what they reported to us or more or less what their family members reported to us.

So, picture this, your child is being struck by a car or in a bad motor vehicle accident and they end up with a C1, C2 spinal injury and they need a ventilator and a tracheostomy, and they end up in ICU. It’s a tragic situation but what happened next then for those clients is that ICUs wanted to withdraw treatment and were saying that, “You should just stop everything your child/family member won’t have any quality of life going forward and you should just donate organs. You should just consent to organ donation and let your child or family member die because it’s “in their best interest” because they won’t have any perceived future quality of life.” Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

Those families objected this point of view strongly and they said, “Well, how do you dare asking me for organ donation for my child or a family member, I want them to live, and they are living.” What that means, they ended up having a tracheostomy and went home eventually with our service Intensive Care at Home.

So, it really comes down to thinking for yourself and making your own decisions and not let intensive care units, dictate your decisions when it comes to who should live and who should die.

Years later, those patients and families are very happy to have their loved ones at home with Intensive Care at Home and live a good quality of life. Our clients all have community access. So, compare that to the contrast of living in an intensive care unit or potentially being dead. Do I need to say more?

On top of that, besides the human aspect of this situation, there’s a massive cost aspect of the situation, intensive care bed costs $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day. Whereas Intensive Care at Home costs approximately half of that.  Like I said to you, all of our clients that have been in a situation like that are all very happy to be alive. They do want to live and it’s their choice. It is absolutely their choice.

So, to appeal to intensive care units as well, think about when you make such suggestions and look outside of your intensive care unit of what’s possible at home and talk to us what’s possible at home.

So, this is a very brief video today, but I think it is also a very important one.

If you want to know more about Intensive Care at Home, go to intensivecareathome.com and contact us through the website there on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email at [email protected].

With Intensive Care at Home, we are currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities as well as in all regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider in Australia, 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 the country. Our clients also receive funding through public hospitals, private health funds, as well as departments of health.

We are the only service provider in Australia in 2024 that has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. No other provider has created policies and procedures for Intensive Care at Home and successfully implemented them in the community like we have. Nobody has built that much intellectual property in the community when it comes to Intensive Care at Home nursing than we have. We are therefore in a position to employ hundreds of years of critical care nursing experience in the community combined.

We’re also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination as well as TAC case management in Victoria. Our NDIS Support Coordinator, Amanda Riches in Victoria has a wealth of knowledge, and I’ll put a link towards the video where I have done an interview with Amanda.

If you’re at home already and you’re watching this and you’re wondering, “Do I need Intensive Care at Home? Can I have Intensive Care at Home?” I’ll give you an example because if you’re at home already and you realize what you have at the moment isn’t working or where you’re stuck in an ICU or your family member is stuck in an ICU, you’re stuck there long-term, ventilation, tracheostomy, or any other medically complex issues that keep you in ICU long-term, you absolutely should reach out to us to see whether we can continue treatment at home or not.

I’ll give you an example. One of our first clients over 10 years ago that was at home on a ventilator with the tracheostomy but had a team of support workers and general registered nurses without intensive care experience at home, but they couldn’t keep the client at home, of course, they couldn’t because it is an intensive care nursing skill to look after ventilation and tracheostomy including in the home. No provider can provide what we can provide because they don’t have the skills, expertise, or accreditation to provide the service.

So, when the client realized that the setup wasn’t working, he reached out to us. As soon as we got started there, we immediately put a stop to the intensive care readmissions. We immediately put a stop to that, and we proved our concept in no time.

Another benefit that comes with our service is we have stable rosters for our clients. We have an amazing rostering team that keeps our rosters stable, and we have a very committed nursing workforce.

So, if you are an NDIS Support Coordinator watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, please reach out to us as well. Or if you don’t know how to go about getting more nursing care for your NDIS participants, please reach out to us. We can help you with the advocacy and we’re also providing NDIS nursing assessments with one of our specialist critical care nurses and legal nurse consultants.

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we’re currently offering jobs for critical care nurses in the home in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Albury, Wodonga, in Bendigo in Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Victoria, and in Geelong. If you have worked in critical care for a minimum of two years, pediatric ICU, ED, and you have already completed a postgraduate critical care qualification, we are delighted to hear from you.

I have a disclaimer because we are offering a tailor-made solution for our clients, which includes regular staff, our clients want to have the same staff coming over and over again because they are so vulnerable and so special. It’s all about building those relationships with our clients and with our team members and having regular and stable teams.

That means if you’re looking for agency work where you can come and go, working for Intensive Care at Home is probably not the right fit for you on a long-term basis because our clients want the same staff coming back over and over again. So, coming to us is all about building relationships with our clients and their families and with us, of course. We want to build a relationship with you so that it remains a win-win situation.

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 ICU and ED for your long-term patients or for your regular readmitting patients. We’re here to help you to take the pressure off your ICU and ED beds, and in most cases, you won’t even pay for it.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this and you have bed blocks in your ICU, ED, and respiratory wards, please reach out to us as well. We can help you there.

Lastly, if you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help and you’re watching this, please reach out to us as well, we can help you there privately.

Once again, contact us at 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, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families with Intensive Care at Home and for families in 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 from this video.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on a show. You will get notification for the YouTube live if you’re 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.