Hello and welcome to another intensivecareathome.com live stream.

Today we are going to talk about the only third-party accredited ICU at home service in Australia and how we cut ICU costs in half. We also want to talk about what happens if ICUs say there is no funding for your loved one going home with a service like Intensive Care at Home.

Welcome to the live stream. My name is Patrik Hutzel. I have been working in critical care nursing for over 25 years in three different countries, where I worked as a nurse manager for over five years in intensive care. I founded Intensive Care at Home in 2012 here in Australia. I was also part of successfully setting up Intensive Care at Home in Germany in the early 2000s before I brought the concept to Australia in 2012, and that is how long we have been operating here in Australia now.

I also want to welcome our viewers on replay because I know a lot of you are watching this on replay. Thank you, everyone who is here live or who watches this video on replay.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel, click the like button, click the notification bell, share the video with anyone who will benefit from it, and leave your comments because your comments will help me to create the content that you want to know.

With Intensive Care at Home, we are providing tailor-made solutions at home for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, with 24-hour critical care registered nurses. We provide tailor-made solutions for 24 hours non-invasive ventilation, BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure) and CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), again with critical care registered nurses. We provide tailor-made solutions for tracheostomy adults and children at home without ventilation with 24-hour critical care registered nurses. We provide home cough assist management, home ventilation weaning, home tracheostomy weaning, home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home intravenous (IV) fluids, home IV antibiotics, home IV potassium, magnesium, and other electrolyte infusions, central line, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line, Hickman’s line, port management at home, indwelling catheter (IDC), suprapubic catheter (SPC) management at home, nasogastric tube, nasojejunal tube, percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) and PEJ (Percutaneous Endoscopic Jejunostomy) tube management at home, as well as palliative care management at home. We are also providing level 2 and level 3 National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) support coordination, as well as Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and WorkSafe case management.

Today I want to talk to you about two things that I believe every family, every case manager, every NDIS planner and every hospital discharge planner needs to understand: accreditation, and cost.

Why third-party accreditation isn’t optional — it’s everything

In 2026, Intensive Care at Home remains the only third-party accredited intensive care at home nursing provider in Australia. That’s not a marketing line, that’s a fact you can verify. We are ISO 9001:2015 certified, audited by BSI Group — one of the world’s most respected accreditation bodies — with zero non-conformances. We are also registered with the NDIS Quality and Safety Commission.

Why does this matter to you? Because when you or your family member needs 24/7 ICU and critical care nursing at home — whether that’s invasive ventilation via tracheostomy, non-invasive ventilation via BiPAP or CPAP, or tracheostomy care without a ventilator — you are trusting a stranger to walk into your home and keep your loved one alive, hour after hour, night after night. Anyone can put “ICU at home” on a website. Almost nobody can back it up with an independent, third-party audit of their clinical governance, incident reporting, staff competency, and quality systems. We can. Read the full detail here: intensivecareathome.com/accreditationquality

 

The business case: cutting the cost of an ICU bed in half

Let’s talk numbers, because families, insurers, NDIS planners and TAC/WorkSafe case managers all need to see the business case, not just the clinical case.

A hospital ICU bed in Australia is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the entire health system. When you factor in medical staffing ratios, hospital overheads, infrastructure, and the simple fact that a hospital ICU bed is a finite, in-demand resource, the daily cost is extraordinary. Intensive Care at Home consistently allows families, insurers and funding bodies to deliver the same 24/7 ICU-level nursing care in the home for a fraction of that cost — in many cases, cutting the cost of an equivalent ICU bed by up to half.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s because home-based ICU nursing removes hospital infrastructure overheads while keeping the clinical staffing ratio identical — often better, because in the home it’s one-on-one, 24/7 Critical Care Registered Nurse care, not a nurse looking after two or three ICU patients at once.

For families, that means getting a loved one home, into their own bed, surrounded by family — instead of stuck in a hospital ICU bed for months or years because “there’s no other option.” For insurers, TAC, WorkSafe and NDIS, it means dramatically better value for the same, or better, clinical outcome. Home care isn’t just the more humane option, it’s the smarter financial option too.

 

What “24/7 ICU and Critical Care nursing at home” actually means

Intensive Care at Home provides 24-hour nursing care with Critical Care Registered Nurses in the home specifically for:

– Invasive ventilation via tracheostomy — full ICU-level ventilator management at home, 24/7, by Critical Care Registered Nurses, not support workers.

– Non-invasive ventilation via BiPAP or CPAP — for patients who need respiratory support but not full invasive ventilation.

– Tracheostomy care without ventilation — patients breathing on their own still need airway management, suctioning, humidification and emergency preparedness from a Critical Care Registered Nurse, not general support staff.

– All of our clinical practice is built on evidence-based mechanical home ventilation guidelines, drawn from decades of experience — including Germany’s 25 to 30-year precedent of long-term invasive home ventilation. Full evidence base here: intensivecareathome.com/mechanical-home-ventilation-guidelines

 

Noah Johnston: a warning we cannot ignore

Noah was a young man on the NDIS who died after his care was downgraded from registered nursing to support worker level. This is not a hypothetical risk. If you or someone you love needs airway management, ventilator support, or tracheostomy care, that is Critical Care Registered Nurse territory — full stop.

 

NDIS Support Coordination, TAC and WorkSafe Case Management

Alongside our 24/7 ICU and critical care nursing, we also provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination, and TAC and WorkSafe case management. We don’t just provide the nursing care — we help navigate the funding, the planning, and the system itself, so families aren’t left fighting alone for the care their loved one is entitled to.

 

The bottom line

If you, or someone you love, needs 24/7 ICU or Critical Care Registered Nurses at home for invasive ventilation via tracheostomy, non-invasive ventilation via BiPAP or CPAP, or tracheostomy care without ventilation — you deserve a provider that is independently, third-party accredited, evidence-based, and clinically uncompromising. That’s Intensive Care at Home.

 

Here is how you can work with us.

If you go to our website at intensivecareathome.com, just call me on one of the numbers on the top of our website. Call us on 041-094-2230 (within Australia) or +61 3 8658 2138 (international), book a call with me here or send us an email to [email protected]

If you are in the U.S, Canada, UK, India or any parts of the world, you can reach out as well. Like I said, we also have the consulting and advocacy service for families in intensive care, and you can find more information at intensivecarehotline.com for that, where we help families in intensive care with education, consulting, advocacy, reviewing medical records, and so forth.

Our team is ready to help you take the next step.

 

Questions and answers

Q: Why does third-party accreditation actually matter for home ICU nursing?

A: Because you’re trusting a stranger to manage a ventilator, a tracheostomy or an airway in your own home, 24/7. Anyone can claim to be “ICU trained.” Third-party accreditation — like our ISO 9001:2015 certification and NDIS registration, audited by BSI Group — means an independent body has verified our clinical governance, incident reporting and staff competency. It’s proof, not a marketing claim.

 

Q: Is Intensive Care at Home really the only accredited provider in Australia?

A: Yes. In 2026, Intensive Care at Home remains the only third-party accredited intensive care at home nursing provider in the country, alongside registration with the NDIS Quality and Safety Commission.

 

Q: How much cheaper is home ICU nursing than a hospital ICU bed?

A: In many cases, up to half the cost of an equivalent hospital ICU bed — because you remove hospital infrastructure overheads while keeping (or improving) the clinical staffing ratio, since it’s one-on-one Critical Care Registered Nurse care at home versus one nurse covering two or three ICU patients in hospital.

 

Q: If it’s cheaper, does that mean the care is lower quality?

A: No — it’s the opposite. Cutting cost comes from removing hospital overheads, not from downgrading the nurse in the room. That distinction is exactly why Noah Johnston’s case matters: genuine efficiency (accreditation, evidence-based practice) is very different from downgrading Registered Nurses to support workers.

 

Q: What conditions does Intensive Care at Home actually care for?

A: Three scenarios only: invasive ventilation via tracheostomy, non-invasive ventilation via BiPAP or CPAP, and tracheostomy care without ventilation — all delivered by Critical Care Registered Nurses, 24/7.

Q: What happened to Noah Johnston, and why do you keep bringing it up?

A: Noah was a young man on the NDIS whose care was downgraded from Registered Nurses to support workers. He died after that downgrade. It’s a warning that complex airway and ventilation care is Critical Care Registered Nurse territory — not somewhere to cut corners.

 

Q: Do you help with NDIS funding, or just provide nursing?

A: Both. We provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination, plus TAC and WorkSafe case management, so families aren’t left navigating funding and planning alone on top of the clinical side.

 

Q: What are your evidence-based guidelines based on?

A: Decades of clinical evidence, including Germany’s 25–30-year precedent of long-term invasive home ventilation. Full guidelines: intensivecareathome.com/mechanical-home-ventilation-guidelines

 

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.