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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 it’s providing quality services for our clients, hospitals and medically-complex patients at home including Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), and IV fluids, IV antibiotics and even now IV potassium infusions.

Now in today’s blog, I do want to give again a real case study. We are currently having an inquiry from a family, who has their four-year old son with cerebral palsy in intensive care and pediatric intensive care. Now, we have a number of clients at home that we have looked after with cerebral palsy for many years. It’s a very similar situation. They are at home needing deep suctioning. They’re not ventilated necessarily, some of them are, but some of them aren’t. And as long as they get the deep suctioning, it generally speaking, keeps the airway patent, keeps the airway free. Keeps them free of chest infections/ pneumonia.

Now, for deep suctioning, you need a critical care nurse to do that. It’s not even a skill of a registered nurse, of a general registered nurse without ICU or pediatric ICU or ED experience. And this is what’s happening to this little boy. He keeps bouncing back between home, and intensive care because they don’t have intensive care nurses at home. With our other cerebral palsy clients, we can predictably keep them home because they get all the therapy and treatment at home that they need in order to stay at home and not get readmitted to intensive care. If they get the deep suctioning, if they get the BiPAP, if they get the CPAP, sometimes they need a tracheostomy. And the moral of the story here really is that you can’t have a medically complex child at home without intensive care nurses, expecting they never go back to ICU. And now the intensive care is also talking about palliative care.

Now, that is very sad when you think about it, this is a four-year old child, with cerebral palsy, we have clients with cerebral palsy that live a long life or can live a long life, and they deserve a life. And now without proper funding in this instance, it’s NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funding that’s needed. This child is probably going to die and is not going to have the quality of life they deserve. Having not a good shot at life is not what we need in this society in 2023 we need to do better than that. There’s no question about that.

Now, also, the NDIS is trying to have “cheap options” by sending support workers to basically intensive care patients. And that in my mind is a crime and I’m not going to border that down because children and adults have died in the community because of the NDIS trying to provide cheap services with support workers with all due respect to support workers. Why is this child in ICU, if a support worker could manage him? There’s a contradiction big time and the NDIS needs to get their act together and provide the right level of care that these, sometimes adults, in this instance, it’s a child needs and not provide a cheap service that kills people. Because like I’ve said on this blog over and over again, there are at least three adults and children NDIS participants that have died in the last few years that needed intensive care nurses. We have evidence for that and they died when our intensive care nurse wasn’t there. And children with ventilation, tracheostomy died during the day when either family members or support workers could not manage a medical emergency .

Again, think about this a client that needs deep suctioning, a client that needs tracheostomy care, ventilation care would be in intensive care in a hospital. So why would that be different in the community? Please leave your comments, make your argument. You probably have none because it doesn’t make sense.

And the NDIS, is just trying to, for lack of a better term, kill people so they can get off. That they can stop paying. It’s as simple as that, you got to call things for what they are and that’s the bottom line.

I hope that helps anyone who has a child or a family member in a similar situation, please contact us. if we get NDIS funding for children and adults with cerebral palsy 24-hour nursing care to keep them out of intensive care, predictably, we can do the same for you. We hope that this particular family will join the bandwagon and talk to the NDIS and also get a proper NDIS support coordinator. We can help with all of that. We have very good NDIS support coordinators in our network. Please contact us if you are also an NDIS support coordinator and you are in a similar situation with your participants. We want to hear from you and you can talk to us, we can help you with the advocacy that is needed in a situation like that.

Thank you so much for watching. And if you are a hospital, and you have bed blocks because of long-term ventilation, tracheostomy, BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), whatever the case may be, anyone that needs an intensive care nurse at home to keep your ICU beds and hospital beds empty, please contact us as well.

If you are an NDIS support coordinator and you have participants that need nursing care, 24-hour nursing care in particular and you don’t know how to go about the funding. Please contact us. We can help you with all the evidence. We employ a team of hundreds of years of critical care nurses. We also have our own medical team now and we absolutely want to hear from you. We can help you with the advocacy, otherwise we wouldn’t be in business.

If you are a critical care nurse and you want a sea change in your career. If you’re looking for a new opportunity, a new challenge we want to hear from you. We hire critical care nurses in the community predominantly in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. We have jobs there for you. If you want to make a difference in the families and the patient’s life in the community instead of intensive care, we want to hear from you.

And if you are an ICU consultant, ICU specialist who’s looking for a career change as well and it wants to be part of our mission. We want to hear from you as well. We are expanding our medical team at the moment as well.

Now, thank you so much for watching.

I also encourage you to read our case studies on our case study section on our website at intensivecareathome.com.

Now, and if you obviously have a loved one in intensive care or at home even and you have insufficient support, your loved one keeps bouncing back to ICU or to hospital. We are here to help. We wouldn’t be in business if our clients would bounce back between ICU and home, we couldn’t manage a business like that. Our clients stay at home predictably because we are bringing the intensive care skills into someone’s home in order to replicate the ICU bed and obviously improve quality of life. Still making sure our clients have community access, very important. All of our clients have community access. So beyond replicating intensive care in the community, we’re also making sure that our clients have community access and have a great quality of life.

Now again, if you have a loved one in intensive care or at home, who needs Intensive Care at Home, please contact us. Don’t worry about the funding, we can help with that. As I said, we are operating all around Australia in all major capital cities, but also in rural and regional areas. We are an NDIS, TAC (Transport Accident Commission) in Victoria, DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs), ICare, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme, Queensland) approved service provider. We have also received funding through the Department of Health and other funding bodies.

So please contact us at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, send us or send us an email to [email protected].

Also have a look at our membership for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team 24 hours a day and we answer all questions, intensive care and Intensive Care at Home related.

We also offer medical record reviews for families in intensive care. We also write NDIS nursing assessments but also nursing assessments for other organizations such as the TAC, Icare, NIISQ, DVA. So you can contact us as well if you need a nursing assessment.

Now, thank you so much for watching.

If you like these videos and 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. Comment below what you want to see next or what questions and insights you have from this video.

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.