Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are.

Welcome to another intensivecareathome.com live stream.

Today, I am going to cover the topic: Too Sick for Rehab but Ventilator- and Tracheostomy-Dependent? Why Intensive Care at Home Is the Better Option. I want to dissect this all today, as I’m sure some of you have come across this and are dealing with this right now if you have a family member in intensive care.

Before we get right into it, I’m your host of the show. My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com. I am the Founder and Director of the company. I founded Intensive Care at Home in 2012 here in Australia. We are the only third-party accredited Intensive Care at Home nursing service, as well as the only one that is actually NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) registered for the specialization of Intensive Care at Home nursing.

Here at Intensive Care at Home, we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies at home, tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children on BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) or CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) at home, non-invasive ventilation where we provide tailor-made solutions for tracheostomy adults and children at home without ventilation, cough assist management, ventilation weaning management at home, and tracheostomy weaning at home, Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV fluids, home IV potassium, home IV antibiotics, home IV magnesium, and other electrolyte infusions at home that comes with central line, (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, Hickman’s line, and port management at home, IDC (Indwelling Catheter) and SPC (Suprapubic Catheter) management at home, nasogastric, nasojejunostomy tube at home, and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG)/ percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy (PEJ) tube management at home, palliative care management at home. We are also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination.

Before you wonder what makes me qualified to talk about this topic, like I said, I founded Intensive Care at Home here in Australia in 2012 after having worked in intensive care nursing for over 25 years in three different countries as of today. I have also been part of a successful startup service in Germany, where we were the first ones providing Intensive Care at Home in Germany. I brought this concept to Australia in 2012, and I also want to welcome our viewers from other countries. I know we have viewers here from all over the world—the US, Canada, the UK, from all over the world, really. So, I just want to welcome you as well. I also want to welcome you if you are watching this on replay because I know we have a lot of viewers on replay as well.

If you have any questions, please type them into the chat. We will have a Q&A section towards the end of the presentation, towards the end of the video. Type your questions away. Also, you can type them if even if you’re watching them on replay, so I know what you’re asking and what videos you want me to create.

Today I want to talk about something that I hear from families all the time and I want to make sure that if this happened to you, you know exactly what to do next. That situation is being told by your hospital your loved one is too sick or too unwell or too acute for rehabilitation. And if that has happened to you or if you’re worried it might happen, stay with me for the next 45 minutes because this could completely change what you think is possible for your loved one.

Also, if you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don’t miss out on any updates I’m sending here. Click the like button, click the notification bell, share this video with anyone who will benefit from it, leave your comments. Because what situation your family is in.

I read and hear about every day either in emails, comments, phone calls and that’s how I create the content here because you know I speak to so many people in this space, speak to families, I speak to doctors, I speak to nurses I speak to people who are immersed in this space either as a caregiver or as a family member or as a client.

So, let me start with the truth about why rehabilitation facilities decline ventilated and tracheostomy dependent patients because I think when families understand the real reason, it actually removes a lot of the shame and confusion around being rejected by a rehab facility or even being rejected by a hospital that refuses to refer to a rehab facility. It is not about your loved one being gone too far. It is not a verdict on their prognosis. It is about the rehab facilities model of care.

Here’s why that model doesn’t work for most ventilated and tracheostomy patients:

1. Rehabilitation facilities are built around patients who can actively participate in therapy. Physio, OT, speech therapy patients need to be engaged and responsive to benefit from that model of care. But they are staffed most of the time by general registered nurses and therapists.
2. They do not have the specialization that is required for ventilation and tracheostomy.
3. They do not have 24-hour critical care registered nurses.
4. They do not carry backup ventilators or emergency tracheostomy equipment.
5. They are not set up to prevent emergencies with ventilators or tracheostomies.
6. They’re not set up to manage them. if they do come up.

Therefore, they’re not set up for 24/7 ICU level clinical monitoring. I show you case in point. For example, a patient in ICU on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, if they’re long-term and they’re stable, they cannot go to a hospital ward or to a hospital floor. They can barely go to a step-down ICU or to a HDU to a high dependency unit. Sometimes they can. That’s really as far as that goes. I can illustrate this further for you. So still the current paradigm in ICU in most English-speaking countries whether that’s in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the U.S., Canada is that there are two options for ICU patients.

The first option is they survive and they go to a hospital ward or to a hospital floor and continue their recovery there. Or the second option is they’re going to die. Think about that. That’s a very limited mindset.

Now, if you’re watching this and you’re in the U.S., for example, you might be saying, “Well, that’s not true. We have the option of go to a hospital floor to a hospital ward, die or go to an LTAC.” Yeah, in the U.S. you have the option of an LTAC, but look at that option. It’s not a great option. It’s a devastating option, as a matter of fact. So, to a degree, LTACs are like a rehab facility to a degree.

So, when a rehab facility says no, what they’re really saying is we’re not equipped for your loved ones level of clinical complexity leaving intensive care and go to a rehab facility. That is a staffing and infrastructure problem with them, not a clinical ceiling for your loved one. The good news is we can lift that clinical ceiling with Intensive Care at Home and continue that rehabilitation at home. There’s also a funding reality that rehab facilities in Australia are funded for patients who participate in active rehabilitation programs.

A patient who is ventilator dependent or tracheostomy dependent is in a slow weaning phase or a patient who’s chronically ventilated and stable does not fit that funding model. That facility literally cannot financially justify the admission under their funding structure. But they can also not justify admitting that patient under their care model because they’re simply lacking critical care trained nurses because you have to have you know clinical governance around employing critical care registered nurses and that clinical governance model is simply not there in a rehab facility.

Finally, there’s the liability aspect. The ventilated patient who deteriorates in a rehab facility without adequate 24-hour critical care registered nurses create significant legal exposure for that facility. Many simply will not accept that risk. So in a nutshell, staffing limitations, infrastructure limitations, funding misalignments and liability. Those are the four main real reasons rehabilitation says no to basically ICU patients. None of them mean your loved one cannot go home and continue rehabilitation there. They mean the rehab model is the wrong model for your loved one.

I’ll give you another example from my extensive experience in hospitals as well. I worked as a nurse manager in ICU for over 5 years. I worked in many ICUs around the world. So, here’s another model that ties into that. Let’s just say you have a long-term ventilated patient or long-term tracheostomy patient in ICU that eventually needs to leave the ICU simply because of bed pressures. They might go to a hospital ward, they might go to a hospital floor, but the reality is if that happens, they still need a one-to-one critical care registered nurse. So, what happens is, yes, the patient can go into a ward bed or a floor bed in a hospital, but they still have to have a 24-hour critical care nurse around them, which is what hospitals call a special.

So, they are specializing an ICU patient basically on the ward. It happens all the time. So again, it’s another factor and more evidence why the patient cannot go to rehab. So that leads me to the next segment of the show. You know what Intensive Care at Home can provide for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, or long-term ventilated adults and children on BPAP CPAP mask ventilation or on tracheostomy care that rehab cannot.

So what does the right model look like? Let me be very specific.

With Intensive Care at Home, the foundation of everything we do is 24/7 one-to-one critical care coverage, is that nurse coverage. Every single patient we care for has a critical care registered nurse or an ICU nurse assigned to them. A critical care registered nurse with a minimum of two years ICU experience and post-graduate critical care qualifications. Sometimes we also employ people that have 5 years ICU experience but do not have a post-graduate critical care qualification.

So, it really depends also on their experience but I am confident to say that we employ 50 to 75% of our nurses on the books are critical care registered and the other 25 to 50% have extensive ICU or ED experience. So that means we’re not employing general registered nurses. We’re not employing community- based nurses. We’re definitely not employing disability support workers. We are employing critical care registered nurses and ICU nurses 24 hours a day. As a matter of fact, to make this even more precise, we are employing hundreds of years of critical care and ICU nursing experience combined in the community.

This is not just our preference. This is what the evidence demands. This is what best practice guidelines demand. This is what the gold standard demands. When you go to our website at intensivecareathome.com, you will find a section on the evidence-based mechanical home ventilation guidelines. They are very explicit. Mechanical ventilation with tracheostomy, mechanical ventilation with BiPAP, CPAP, and tracheostomy without mechanical ventilation must only be provided by 24-hour critical care registered nurses. That is the minimum standard. Any service delivery that falls below that standard puts the ventilated adult or child at risk or puts the tracheostomy adult or child at risk and increases the burden on them and their families.

I have spoken on my YouTube channel for many years that if you drop those minimum standards, clients have died. I have evidence that clients have died under the disability support worker model and under a model with registered nurses without ICU experience. Plenty of people have died in the community because of violating the evidence-based mechanical ventilation guidelines.

In 2026, there was the Noah Johnston case that was in the media in January, where Noah Johnston passed away in December 2025 because the NDIS was cutting its funding from 24-hour critical care registered nurses to only daytime registered nurses and nighttime support workers. Just as we predicted, when the NDIS tried to implement this model of care, Noah would die. Unfortunately he did, because disability support workers did not know how to manage the ventilator and a tracheostomy and that is why Noah passed away.

The evidence-based mechanical home ventilation guidelines are standing the test of time. Those guidelines are a result of over 25 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Germany and also now a result of over 14 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing here in Australia.

The bottom line is that our CCRNs can do what rehab nurses and disability support workers cannot. They can:

• Manage ventilator alarms and troubleshoot ventilator malfunctions in real time
• Perform emergency tracheostomy tube changes as well as elective tracheostomy tube changes
• Prevent emergency tracheostomy tube changes and prevent medical emergencies, but also know how to manage them if they do come up
• Manage complex secretion clearance and suctioning safely — knowing when to suction and how to suction
• Respond to acute respiratory deterioration
• Understand ventilator modes, ventilator settings, ventilator alarm limits, and recognize when a change in the patient’s condition requires urgent escalation to a medical officer

The evidence-based mechanical ventilation guidelines also require that if a patient needs ventilation for more than 16 hours per day, a second backup ventilator must be on site. That is not optional — it is mandatory, because when life depends on a machine, that machine needs backup.

Beyond the clinical skills of our critical care nursing force, we are also ISO 9001:2015 certified, audited by BSI Group last year, and we are also NDIS registered, which makes us the only Intensive Care at Home nursing service in Australia with that level of third-party quality accreditation. You can look up our accreditation status and our quality and safety credentials on our website at intensivecareathome.com/accreditationquality. Our NDIS provider number is 4050000298. We are operating all around Australia in all states and territories, in all regional and remote areas, as well as in all metropolitan areas.

Noah Johnston

Before I go into case studies, I need to talk about Noah Johnston. Noah Johnston was a young man with a tracheostomy who died in December 2025. His tracheostomy tube became disconnected from the ventilator. He did not have a critical care registered nurse caring for him overnight — he had disability support workers — and he died.

We were looking after Noah 24 hours a day with critical care registered nurses. The NDIS thought it was a good idea to cut that funding and only give him daytime critical care registered nurses and nighttime support workers. Once that was implemented, we warned the NDIS that he would die. The family warned the NDIS that he would die when no critical care registered nurse was around. The NDIS ignored that advice — independent advice from doctors and nurses. All the evidence was there, they ignored that advice, and Noah unfortunately passed away, just as we predicted and just as many others have.

Noah’s family decided to speak publicly and take their case to the media. Many other NDIS participants have died under a similar model of care, but the families have not spoken publicly. But I talk to a lot of people — suppliers, families, hospitals — and I do have the insider knowledge. There are also cases where we warned the NDIS and the NDIS Quality and Safety Commission about similar situations and clients have passed away, but the families in those situations decided not to speak publicly.

Noah Johnston was 22 years old with a tracheostomy, and when that tracheostomy tube became disconnected from the ventilator, no one on duty had the clinical skills to recognize it, to act fast enough, or to know what to do to manage that airway. Noah died. Noah Johnston’s death was entirely preventable. It was the predictable outcome of deploying staff who were never appropriately qualified for the clinical complexity of his needs. It is like flying the airplane with a cabin crew instead of the pilot. Who do you want to fly the airplane — the cabin crew or the pilot? The answer is obviously the pilot. Disability support workers have very good intentions but are simply not trained.

The evidence-based mechanical ventilation guidelines clearly outline that only exclusively critical care trained nurses can provide the care at home for ventilation and tracheostomy — 24 hours a day. It must be.

Here is what I want families to hear very clearly. If a hospital tells you your loved one is too complex for rehab and then in the same breath suggests that disability support workers or general community nurses can manage their ventilator and tracheostomy at home, those two statements are in complete contradiction. If your loved one is too complex for rehab, they are absolutely too complex for disability support workers or even for general registered nurses — because that is what you would get in a rehab facility.

Noah Johnston deserved 24-hour critical care registered nurse coverage. Independent assessments from doctors, nurses, and OTs all verified that. Our clients get 24/7 CCRN coverage, and that is why our model of care is keeping clients alive predictably while other models are not.

Case Studies

These are all true cases, but I will not name any clients.

Case Study 1: We are currently looking after a ventilated adult in Melbourne discharged from the ICU with what the hospital called nursing support — a general nursing agency. It was a mixture of enrolled nurses, general nurses, and disability support workers. That general nursing agency and disability support worker agency eventually realized they were not qualified to look after this client and they got us to help. Things that were happening included ventilator alarms being ignored for 15 minutes because the nurse did not know what they meant or how to troubleshoot. The client nearly died. A partial tracheostomy tube dislodgement occurred — an enrolled nurse did not recognize it until the patient was already in respiratory distress. Suction equipment malfunctioned at 2 a.m. with no backup equipment and no clinical escalation pathway. The inadequate care got replaced with 24-hour CCRN coverage with Intensive Care at Home, which included the advocacy for it. A general nursing agency does not even know how to advocate for it because they simply do not have the clinical skills. This client is alive today, years later, under our care, and lives a very good quality of life. What happened when the client first went home was not bad luck. It was entirely the predictable outcome of the wrong staffing model for that patient.

Case Study 2: A few years ago we took home a client who was in a rehab facility with a tracheostomy and also needed chemotherapy. The rehab facility was not adequately staffed to look after this client and we took the client home. It was actually a client for palliative care, even though she was in a rehab facility. She actually went home for palliative care because unfortunately she had too many things working against her — a tracheostomy which was a result of a motor vehicle accident, and at the same time she had cancer that was being treated with chemotherapy. We got into the client’s home with 24-hour nursing, provided tracheostomy care and provided chemotherapy until the client decided she no longer wanted any chemotherapy and that she wanted to pass away. She then had a peaceful end-of-life situation at home on the family’s terms. She did not want to pass away in a hospital. She had a peaceful death at home, which is what she and the family wanted. A rehabilitation facility was not the right environment for her.

Case Study 3: This particular family did their research first. The patient wanted to discharge from a major metropolitan hospital from the ICU and was later tracheostomy-dependent. The hospital recommended staying in hospital because a rehabilitation facility would not take the client — simply too complex. The hospital did not even suggest going home. The ICU said the only option was for the client to stay. The family said wait. They eventually reached out to us. They called us and they already had NDIS funding in place. We did a full clinical assessment, reviewed the documentation, liaised with the ICU team and with the private intensive care specialists in the community, and developed a home care plan with CCRNs for that client. The patient went home from the ICU directly to Intensive Care at Home — no rehab trial, no general nursing agency, no crisis that forced a change. The family said to us — we got our child back. This is what happens when families ask the right questions early and insist on the right standard of care.

Case Study 4: A ventilated patient was admitted to one of the rare rehabilitation facilities that does accept complex patients after ICU discharge. The family was cautiously optimistic. Over the following few weeks — ventilator alarms were not responded to in time, there was inconsistent tracheostomy care between shifts, poor suction technique led to recurring chest infections, and one acute deterioration required emergency ICU readmission. After that readmission, the family contacted us — exhausted, frightened, and furious at a system that had let them down repeatedly. We deployed a CCRN assessment team, built a comprehensive home care plan, and facilitated direct discharge from intensive care to a home care environment. That patient has not been readmitted to the ICU since. The chest infection rate dramatically reduced and quality of life for the patient and the family significantly improved. One change made all the difference — critical care registered nurses 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Funding — NDIS, TAC, DVA, Private Health Funds, Departments of Health, Hospital Funding

For many families, the immediate question at this point is how to pay for this. Let me walk you through the main funding streams in Australia.

Before I walk through each pathway, keep the following in mind. An ICU bed costs $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day. Let that sink in. Intensive Care at Home is approximately half of that cost. Because it is half of that cost, there is obviously a business case. Somebody who is paying $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day for an ICU bed has an interest in cutting that cost in half, and you have an interest in going home. The dynamics and the leverage are already there.

Number 1 — NDIS: If your loved one is under the age of 65 and has a permanent significant disability that leads to long-term ventilation, tracheostomy, or any other medical complexities that require 24-hour intensive care nurses — which obviously includes long-term ventilation and tracheostomy dependence — they may be eligible for NDIS funding that covers intensive care nursing support 24 hours a day. We are an NDIS registered provider with provider number 4050000298. We have helped many families navigate NDIS plans for ventilated patients, including supporting appeals where initial plans were inadequate. The relevant support categories are high intensity daily activities and in some cases specialist disability accommodation. 24/7 CCRN nursing has been successfully funded through NDIS for our clients. We also provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination — keep that in mind.

TAC: If your loved one’s condition results from a transport accident, the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) can fund Intensive Care at Home nursing. We are an approved TAC provider and we have clients across Victoria and even New South Wales funded through the TAC. We are also providing TAC case management.

Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA): For veterans who meet DVA eligibility criteria, DVA can fund home nursing supports. Contact us and we will help you navigate that pathway.

Private health insurance: Coverage varies by fund and policy, but we can provide detailed documentation to support your claim.

Departments of Health: If your case needs to be brought to a Department of Health — particularly for those who think they only qualify for aged care funding — do not be shy in asking. Always keep in mind someone is paying for the ICU bed at $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day. Someone might as well pay half of that cost.

If you are not sure which funding pathway applies to you, call us at intensivecareathome.com, call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, book a call by clicking the schedule appointment button on our website, or send an email to [email protected], or call me directly on my mobile phone — 0410 942 230.

Your Action Plan Right Now

If you are in a situation where the hospital has told you your loved one is too sick for rehabilitation and you do not know what to do, here is your action plan.

Step 1 — do not accept nursing home or long-term acute care as the only option without exploring Intensive Care at Home first.

Step 2 — request a clinical assessment from Intensive Care at Home before you accept any discharge plan. Call us on 041-094-2230 (within Australia) or +61 3 8658 2138 (international), explain the situation, and we will review the clinical picture and tell you honestly whether home care is appropriate, what it would look like, and where the funding is coming from.

Step 3 — ask the hospital these specific questions:

• What are the qualifications of the nurses in the proposed discharge plan?
• Will there be 24/7 one-to-one critical care registered nurses, or disability support workers, or general registered nurses, or enrolled nurses?
• Is the proposed provider ISO 9001:2015 certified for Intensive Care at Home?
• Are they NDIS registered?
• Do they follow evidence-based mechanical home ventilation guidelines with 24-hour critical care registered nurses?
• Do they have a blog and talk about it? Do they have a YouTube channel and talk about it to show their expertise? Have they talked about case studies publicly?

If any of those answers are inadequate, say so. You have every right to refuse a discharge plan that does not meet your loved one’s clinical needs.

Also join our email list at intensivecareathome.com. We send regular updates on home ventilation, NDIS discharge rights, and clinical education for families. We answer questions for families in intensive care or Intensive Care at Home. You should never be without information when navigating these decisions.

Questions and Answers

Question 1 — My mom is on a ventilator in the ICU and has been there for three months. They keep saying she will not improve. Is it too late to bring her home?

It is never too late to consider home care. Long-stay ICU patients are often exactly who we are designed for. The question is not how long they have been in the ICU — the question is whether their condition is stable enough to manage safely at home with 24-hour critical care registered nursing support. Contact us, we will do a clinical assessment and give you an honest answer. You also have a very strong case straight away because someone is paying $5,000 to $10,000 per bed day for your mom’s ICU bed. Someone might as well pay half of that and get a better quality of life for your mom and for you. The ICU also wants to free up a bed — there is a high demand for ICU beds — so again this creates a win-win situation.

Question 2 — We were told my mom needs 24-hour nursing, but NDIS will only fund 16 hours a day. What do we do?

This is unfortunately very common in the beginning. An NDIS plan that funds 16 hours when the clinical need is 24 hours is an inadequate plan and can be appealed. We have supported many families through this process successfully. The key is comprehensive clinical documentation that clearly establishes the 24-hour nursing requirement. We can help with that, and like I said, we also provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination.

Question 3 — How quickly can you mobilize care after ICU discharge?

For urgent situations, we can sometimes mobilize within 48 to 72 hours depending on location, clinical complexity, and family preferences. The earlier you can contact us in the discharge planning process, the smoother the transition. Ideally contact us weeks, sometimes even months before discharge — not the day before. Some families prefer only female staff, some only prefer male staff, and some have cultural preferences. We try to work with all of them. We took a client home recently where the family wanted female staff only, but in that location we could not mobilize only female staff for a 24-hour roster, so we had to use male staff as well, and the family agreed to that.

Question 4 — We live in regional Queensland. Can you help us?

Absolutely. We operate across Queensland, including virtually all regional areas. Every case is assessed individually. Some regional locations are more complex logistically, but we will always explore what is possible, including fly-in, fly-out rosters. Contact us and we will be honest with you about what we can offer in your specific location.

Question 5 — The hospital is pushing for a nursing home. Can we refuse?

Yes, absolutely. You have the right to refuse a discharge destination that you do not believe is appropriate for your loved one. If your loved one is ventilated or has a tracheostomy, a nursing home will not be able to look after your loved one unless they engage a specialist service like ours to come to the nursing home 24 hours a day. Hospitals cannot force a patient into a placement the family refuses. However, the hospital can apply pressure. The best way to push back is to have an alternative plan ready, which is exactly what we can help you develop. Also, if you go to our sister site intensivecarehotline.com, we have a consulting and advocacy service for families in intensive care.

Question 6 — What conditions does Intensive Care at Home care for at home?

We care for any ventilator and/or tracheostomy-dependent adult or child. That includes patients with chronic respiratory failure from any cause — that could be motor neurone disease (MND), ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), spinal cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, acquired brain injuries (ABIs), traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Guillain-Barré syndrome, post-ICU respiratory failure, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), Rett syndrome, stroke, Duchenne muscular dystrophy. If your loved one is ventilated with or without a tracheostomy and needs to come home, we want to hear from you.

Closing

The bottom line is this — being told your loved one is too sick for rehab is not the end. For many families, it is actually the beginning of a better answer and a better solution. The answer is Intensive Care at Home with 24/7 critical care registered nurses. That is our model. It is evidence-based, third-party accredited, NDIS registered, and it is keeping our clients alive predictably when other models could not.

If you are in this situation right now, call us at intensivecareathome.com. Book a call with me by clicking on the schedule appointment button on the website. Do not wait, or call me directly on my mobile phone — 0410 942 230. The earlier we are involved in the discharge planning process, the better the outcome for your loved one.

I am Patrik Hutzel. Stay safe, stay informed, and never settle for inadequate care. See you next time. Have a great weekend and a great week ahead.

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.