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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 providing quality care for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. Also, otherwise medically complex adults and children at home including home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), home tracheostomy care when adults and children are not ventilated. Also, Home TPN (total parenteral nutrition), home IV potassium, and home IV magnesium infusions, as well as IV antibiotics. We also provide port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, Hickman’s line management as well as palliative care at home, and that also includes ventilation weaning.

We have also provided an emergency department bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District. We have successfully kept patients at home as opposed to them going to the emergency department. So, Intensive Care at Home can keep your emergency department free by providing some of that care at home as well.

Now, in today’s video, I want to break down a case study but also talk more about that we are now doing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination. The reason that is so important is that over the many years with Intensive Care at Home, we’ve been servicing clients now since 2013. We’ve provided hundreds of thousands of hours of Intensive Care at Home nursing at home.

We have now also started to provide Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination because what we found over the years is simply that many clients that inquired for our service did not have the funding because the NDIS Support Coordinators didn’t do their jobs properly and they could only get funding for support workers, which in essence was a death sentence and patients have died because of it. So, that’s why we decided to provide our own NDIS support coordination.

Recently, our NDIS Support Coordinator, Amanda, connected with a new client who’s at home with the tracheostomy, but only has support workers and that could be a death sentence. So, when support workers or even general registered nurses are looking after patients on a tracheostomy or on a ventilator, they don’t really know what to do.

A tracheostomy is an artificial airway that in hospitals, most patients with a tracheostomy, 99% of patients in hospital with the tracheostomy would be in intensive care. That’s how unstable their airway is, and it takes specialist training for intensive care nurses to look after tracheostomy.

So, for the NDIS to say, “We can look after tracheostomy at home with support workers and because they can do an online e-module” is serious business. It’s almost like a joke, but it’s not funny at all because people have died because of the incompetence from the NDIS because bureaucrats are making decisions without taking all the clinical assessments into consideration.

It’s getting better now because we are, for example, doing all the nursing assessments for our clients and we are also engaging with the right NDIS Support Coordinators. But the bottom line is that if NDIS participants or other clients for that matter, don’t get the right level of care, they are at risk of dying.

I can only reiterate here that if evidence-based care is not being given and not being funded patients either end up in hospitals instead of going home, blocking hospital beds and having no quality of life, or if they are going home without intensive care nurses, they are dying, and we have evidence for that.

So, Bill Shorten, if you are watching this, you and your NDIS agency have a lot of work to do, making sure the clients, some of the clients, not all of them get the right level of care, especially when there’s overwhelming evidence for it.

So, for example, here at Intensive Care at Home, we provide evidence-based care. You can verify that when you go to intensivecareathome.com, if you go to our Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, and you will see that, patients at home with a tracheostomy and/or ventilator need to be looked after, 24 hours a day, with critical care nurses with a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience. That’s exactly what we are doing here in Intensive Care at Home. What we do is actually evidence-based.

If support worker agencies say they can look after tracheostomy or ventilation. Where’s the evidence? I want to also see the hospital readmission rates. I want to see whether people under their care have potentially died. It’s challenging enough as it is for any provider to look after ventilation and tracheostomy patients at home, but it has to be safe.

Furthermore, our NDIS Support Coordinator, Amanda, recently engaged with a new client. He is at home, he was looked after by support workers with the tracheostomy, ended up in hospital because, (A), there was no more funding left. That’s another sign that when NDIS Support Coordinators can’t maintain the funding that you don’t have the right NDIS Support Coordinator, especially when it comes to care for tracheostomy and mechanical ventilation because it’s so complex that you need the right funding and the right team to make this happen without things going terribly wrong if you don’t have the right level of support.

So, once again, what we’ve also found over the years that many NDIS Support Coordinators, they don’t even know what the tracheostomy and the ventilator is. They think they can make decisions about patients and on life support. That is dangerous.

Again, that is also a downfall, once again, of the NDIS that there are no checks and balances for NDIS Support Coordinators, how they can even become NDIS Support Coordinators. So, that is really dangerous and also needs to be reviewed by the NDIS that the quality of NDIS Support Coordinators overall is not that great and especially we are operating in a niche when it comes to really complex clients, they need a good NDIS Support Coordinator.

You can get that here at Intensive Care at Home if you contact us at intensivecareathome.com. Just call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or you can send us an email to [email protected] because I know you might have a loved one in hospital with a ventilator, tracheostomy. You might be watching this, and you might be in hospital and everyone’s telling you, “Oh, you can’t go home. There’s not enough funding.” Please reach out to us. I promise you, we can help you with the right level of advocacy.

It’s very important that you have the right advocates on your side to understand, intensive care and of course Intensive Care at Home and with ventilation and tracheostomy and the advocacy that needs to be involved there to go home. We understand that inside out. So, I really encourage you.

If you are a hospital and you have bed blocks in ICU and you don’t know how to make sure your loved one can improve their quality of life at home or your patients in ICU can improve their quality of life at home or in some instances, quality of end of life, I’d also encourage you to reach out. We have a great team that will make things happen for all stakeholders involved.

So, I hope that clarifies what we do and where the gaps are really with the NDIS or with other funding bodies as well. The gaps are often the advocacy and the right teams making things happen for clients that want to leave hospitals but can’t yet because they don’t have the right level of support, they don’t know how to get the right level of support. Please reach out to us here at intensivecareathome.com.

Now, because if you are not being looked after at home with critical care nurses, it’s like flying the airplane with the cabin crew instead of the pilot, that’s how dangerous it is. That’s why, Intensive Care at Home, we are also the only service in Australia that is actually third party accredited for Intensive Care at Home nursing. There’s no other service in Australia and please correct me if I’m wrong in 2024 that has been the same level of expertise, same level of knowledge, same level of intellectual property than we have to provide Intensive Care at Home nursing. No other provider has achieved that level of accreditation than we have.

Now, with the Intensive Care at Home, we are currently operating all around Australia and all major capital cities as well as in regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) approved service provider all around Australia. We are TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved and WorkSafe approved in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), as well as the DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider all around Australia. We have also received funding through public hospitals, departments of health as well as private health funds. So, reach out to us if you need help.

We are also sending our critical care nurses into the home to keep your emergency departments empty. We change nasogastric tubes (87) at home, PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tubes at home, catheters at home, tracheostomy tubes at home, of course, and we have done that successfully for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District in the past.

Now, we’re also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination. If you need help with your NDIS plan, if you have a loved one or your plan doesn’t give away what you need, especially when it comes to registered nurses just as explained, once again, today, we want to hear from you, and we can help you otherwise we would not be in business.

If you’re an NDIS Support Coordinator and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants or for more funding because you don’t have to advocate for nursing care, please reach out to us. We can help you also with specialist NDIS nursing assessments.

If you are a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we want to hear from you as well. If you have worked in critical care for a minimum of two years and you ideally have completed a postgraduate critical care qualification. We want to hear from you. We currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Albury, Wodonga, Bendigo in Country Victoria, as well as in Warragul in Country Victoria. We absolutely want to hear from you.

Please keep in mind we’re looking for intensive care nurses or critical care nurses that want to complement our team. We’re looking for team players and we’re looking for people who are wanting regular work.

We are a service provider that has a tailor-made solution for our clients and their families. We are not an agency, which means we pride ourselves on having this tailor-made solution with regular staff and with the regular teams that want to build relationships with our clients, and we want to build relationships with you as well.

So please, let me be clear that we are not an agency and we’re not and we have rosters. We have work in advance, and we don’t want our staff coming and going because that’s not what our clients want.

If you are an intensive care specialist, we’re currently expanding our medical team as well. We want to hear from you. If you are an intensive care specialist and you have bed blocks in your ICU, I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks. But more importantly, we improve the quality of life and sometimes quality of end of life for your patients and their families and you won’t even pay for it.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because once again, we can help you eliminate bed blocks in ICU, ED, respiratory wards, et cetera.

Once again, our website is intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected]. If you are in the U.S. or in the U.K. watching this, we can help you there privately. Please reach out to us as well.

Now, if you like my videos, 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, share the video with your friends and families, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer all of your questions live on the show.

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.