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My name is Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home at intensivecareathome.com, where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children on BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) and CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation at home, where we provide tailor-made solutions for adults and children with tracheostomy without ventilation at home. We provide ventilation and tracheostomy weaning at home whenever medically appropriate. We provide home cough assist management, home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV fluids, home IV antibiotics, IV potassium, magnesium and other electrolyte infusions — which goes hand in hand with central line, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, Hickman’s line, as well as port management at home. We provide IDC (Indwelling Catheter), SPC (Suprapubic Catheter), PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) and PEJ (Percutaneous Endoscopic Jejunostomy) tube, nasogastric tube and nasojejunostomy tube management at home, as well as palliative care management at home. We are also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) support coordination and TAC (Transport Accident Commission) case management.

 

This week I want to take you behind the scenes of the MND (Motor Neurone Disease) National Conference 2026, where Intensive Care at Home was a proud sponsor. The conference just concluded on Friday the 11th of September. It was a two-and-a-half-day conference. We not only had a booth representing Intensive Care at Home — because we have MND clients at home on BiPAP ventilation, PEG tubes, IDC, and SPC — but we also have MND clients at home with tracheostomies. As a matter of fact, we are looking after the longest-living tracheostomy MND patient in Australia, since 2019.

The MND National Conference ran from the 9th to the 11th of September 2026 in Adelaide at the Convention Centre, and Intensive Care at Home was a proud sponsor. We had a booth there for the full two days and I was also able to present an abstract about tracheostomy care at home with 24-hour critical care nurses, NDIS-funded, for MND patients.

 

Honestly, some of the best parts of the conference happened right there at the booth — doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, neurologists, palliative care specialists, patients and clients with MND, and families with lived experience — all coming through to talk about what home-based 24/7 critical care nursing looks like for MND clients with BiPAP, CPAP ventilation, or tracheostomy and ventilation. A lot of families with lived experience said: “Oh my goodness, it would have been so good to know about Intensive Care at Home” — and they did not at the time.

 

Others who came by at our booth were NDIS support coordinators — and I encourage NDIS support coordinators to reach out to us, because we can elevate the care for MND clients and we can provide the evidence for MND clients for nursing care.

 

A Key Conversation: IV Edaravone for MND Clients in the Community

One conversation I want to highlight was with the team from Teva. We talked through what it would take for a service like ours to administer IV edaravone — one of the MND-specific treatments — in the community, rather than requiring clients to travel to hospitals for it. As treatments for MND keep evolving, the nursing infrastructure around them has to keep up. That is a conversation I am very keen to continue having with Teva — about how we can help them roll out edaravone for MND clients who are eligible for it. The infrastructure to roll out this medication in the community — because it can only be given intravenously — is simply not there yet. We can help establish that infrastructure by administering the medication through a PVC (Peripheral Venous Catheter), PICC line, Hickman’s line, CVC (Central Venous Catheter), or port. We have that infrastructure to make that happen.

 

What I also took away from these two-and-a-half days of conversations is this: the clinical appetite for home-based MND care with specialist nursing services like Intensive Care at Home is there across every discipline. The missing piece — time and time again — is nursing infrastructure that can actually deliver it safely and can also do the appropriate advocacy.

 

The Abstract: Tracheostomy Care for MND at Home — Enabling Informed Choice Through Specialist Community Nursing

 

I also had the opportunity to present an abstract while I was there. The title of the abstract was: Tracheostomy Care for Motor Neurone Disease at Home Enabling Informed Choice Through Specialist Community Nursing.

 

The short version: even when an MND client and their family choose home-based ventilation, a safe hospital discharge is often unachievable in Australia today, simply because the specialist community nursing infrastructure does not exist in most places. Most MND clients unfortunately progress to needing BiPAP at some point, a PEG tube, potentially IDC or SPC or they progress to wanting or needing a tracheostomy to stay alive. Both BiPAP, CPAP, and tracheostomy can only be done safely with 24-hour critical care nurses. Otherwise, people have died without the 24-hour critical care nursing infrastructure and I have talked about this publicly for a long time.

 

I shared some outcomes from the group of MND clients we have supported at home with respiratory needs. Three of them were discharged directly from ICU (Intensive Care Unit) to home, and there were zero unplanned hospital readmissions across all of those clients. I want to be clear that this is a small cohort and every situation is different but it shows what is possible when the right 24-hour critical care nursing model is in place.

 

What I also have not mentioned in the abstract is this: this is our experience in Australia. I have worked with intensive care at home in Germany 25 years ago, and we were looking after tracheostomy MND clients there very successfully with 24/7 critical care nurses cutting the cost of an ICU bed by around 50%. That was a very successful model. People lived at home predictably and permanently with critical care nurses 24 hours a day.

 

This is a point I come back to in every piece of content I make on tracheostomy and ventilation: you would not want a general registered nurse, you definitely would not want an enrolled nurse, and you absolutely would not want a disability support worker flying your plane. What I mean by that is: you want a qualified pilot in your cockpit for tracheostomy and ventilation management at home. It needs 24/7 critical care registered nurses because airway problems in this population can escalate in seconds. If you want the full clinical details behind that, go and check out our evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines. I will put the link in the description and show notes, and it is on our website at intensivecareathome.com. The guidelines clearly highlight that whether it is tracheostomy without ventilation, ventilation without tracheostomy, or ventilation with tracheostomy at home — you need 24-hour critical care registered nurses, similar to an ICU. Why would we lower standards?

 

Third-Party Accreditation

Something I made a point of mentioning to everyone who came to our booth is that at Intensive Care at Home, we are the only third-party accredited Intensive Care at Home nursing service in Australia ISO 9001:2015 certified and NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission registered, independently audited by BSI Group. That is not a claim we are making about ourselves. It is independently verified. I will put a link to our accreditation page in the show notes, or you can go to intensivecareathome.com/accreditation-quality.

 

Advice for Families, NDIS Support Coordinators, and Clinicians

If you are a family, an NDIS support coordinator, or a clinician working through a tracheostomy or ventilation decision for someone with MND, here is my advice.

 

Do not assume that safe home care is not possible just because nobody has proposed a discharge plan. Do not assume that just because someone has MND, they need to be rushed towards palliative care. With the right funding and the right level of support at home, patients can live for long periods of time if they are looked after well.

 

Ask the right questions — specifically, what nursing model is being proposed. Ask whether it is critical care registered nurses, or general registered nurses, enrolled nurses, or disability support workers managing an airway and ventilator — which would simply be unsafe and can lead to client deaths.

Only 24/7 critical care registered nurses are safe for anyone on ventilation with or without tracheostomy at home. It is evidence-based and people have died with other models of care. They were all preventable deaths.

 

Keep your own copies of clinical letters, ventilation settings, and assessments along the way. It makes advocating for the right level of care so much easier.

 

Just a reminder of what we do day by day: Intensive Care at Home provides 24/7 critical care registered nurses all around Australia and in all states and territories for invasive ventilation with tracheostomy, non-invasive BiPAP and CPAP ventilation, and tracheostomy care without ventilation — funded through NDIS, TAC, WorkSafe, DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs), through hospitals, departments of health, or privately.

 

Sponsoring and presenting at the MND National Conference in 2026 in Adelaide confirmed something for me. The clinical will to support MND clients at home is already there — across neurology, respiratory medicine, allied health, and palliative care. What we need now is more people knowing that this kind of specialist community nursing already exists, so home-based care does not stay a theoretical choice for families who want it. If that is something you are navigating right now, reach out. That is exactly what we are here for.

If you found this useful, please subscribe, hit the notification bell, share the video with anyone who needs to see this message, and I will see you in the next video.

 

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.