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Hi it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME where we provide tailor made solutions for long-term ventilated Adults & 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 patients and medically complex patients at home, including home TPN.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

MY HUSBAND HAD A LIVER TRANSPLANT ON A VENTILATOR WITH TRACHEOSTOMY. CAN HE BE WEANED OFF THE VENTILATOR AT HOME?

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

https://intensivecareathome.com/my-husband-had-a-liver-transplant-on-a-ventilator-with-tracheostomy-can-he-be-weaned-off-the-ventilator-at-home/

In today’s blog post, I want to talk about the NDIS choice and control.

Intensive Care at Home for Long-Term Ventilated Patients with NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) Choice & Control

 

Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated, adults and children with tracheostomies in the community. And where we also provide services to home TPN clients, as well as medically-complex clients that would otherwise stay in intensive care.

So today, I want to talk about the NDIS choice and control. Now, the NDIS, for those of you who haven’t heard of the NDIS, is the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Australia. And it enables some people with a disability to go home from hospital much quicker.

In our case, it actually is a facilitator to send long-term ventilated patients out of intensive care, into the home as a genuine alternative to a long-term stay in intensive care, with our 24/7 intensive care nurses at home.

Now, the NDIS brands itself for choice and control and what we are seeing for example, we have a client at home that is having 24-hour nursing care because he needs an intensive care nurse, 24 hours a day. He’s on BIPAP intermittently, he’s having a PICC line. He’s got PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) feeds, he’s got intermittent seizures, like tonic-clonic seizures. And he’s on a seizure management plan with benzodiazepine. He vomits quite frequently. So he’s at high risk of aspiration. And the NDIS now, all of a sudden, says that instead of having an intensive care nurse, the client now can have an enrolled nurse which is similar to almost like a nursing assistant in order to look after an intensive care patient at home.

So, it’s quite frankly, it’s medical negligence. And given that the NDIS is branding itself on choice and control, it’s quite a bit of a joke. And it’s not serving those NDIS clients that have high needs, that have ventilation needs as part of their disability, that have seizure management needs that have unstable airways. Anyone in a hospital with an unstable airway or with similar needs would have an intensive care nurse, 24 hours a day as well. So, why would it be any different in the community? Since when do we need to decrease standards for a sick client in the community, as opposed to a hospital? The rights of a patient are the same. They need to be looked after according to their clinical need and not according to funding budgets.

Now, if you look at the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines that we published on our website at intensivecareathome.com, you will see that they are evidence-based. And the evidence clearly says that, anyone at home on a ventilator, either with BiPAP, CPAP or tracheostomy or no tracheostomy can only be safely looked after if they have an intensive care nurse, 24 hours a day. And those intensive care nurses, I should say, need to have a minimum of two–years intensive care nursing experience.

Now for us here at Intensive Care at Home, we’re employing hundreds of years of ICU nursing experience in the community. And we are bringing all this experience to our clients in the home so that they can have quality of life. And in some instances, quality of end-of-life at home instead of intensive care.

So, also if you’re an NDIS participant, or you want to become an NDIS participant as part of your disability, and you have ventilation, tracheostomy, you need seizure management, or you have TPN or central line, Hickman’s line, PICC line, you should talk to us. You should also talk to your NDIS support coordinator who should be advocating for the funding for you. But we can help you with the advocacy for the funding, because, we are finding that most NDIS support coordinator, are not clinicians, and they need our help. They ask us to write nursing reports. They ask us to organize doctors that are to get the right funding through the advocacy.

So that is my quick tip for today.

Reach out to us at intensivecareathome.com. We are at the moment servicing mainly Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane in Australia, but also Adelaide and Perth, as well as Canberra. And again, you should be reaching out to us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, and we can help you take the next steps.

Also, if you are at home already, and you’re finding that you have insufficient support when you’re on a ventilator or if you have a lot of ICU readmissions, or if you have another provider that doesn’t work with intensive care nurses, and you’re finding they’re unreliable, or they’re not meeting your clinical needs you should definitely contact us as well.

Again, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home, go to intensivecareathome.com, call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send us an email to [email protected].

Also have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org

As part of our service, we write nursing assessments for the NDIS, but we also review medical records and help you in interpreting medical records as well.

Now, like this video, give it a thumbs up, share it with your friends and families, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for Intensive Care at Home, but also for families in intensive care and comment below what you want to see next, or what questions you have. Click the notification bell.

And thanks for watching.

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

Thank you.

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.