Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hi, t’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 services for long-term ventilated adults and children and medically complex patients at home in include including home TPN, home IV potassium infusions, home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), as well as 24-hour nursing care for patients or clients with the tracheostomy, adults and children.

More specifically, with a tracheostomy that are not ventilated, we also provide IV antibiotics at home, palliative care services, as well as port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, and Hickman’s line management.

Now, in today’s blog, I want to briefly talk about an inquiry that we’re currently having. So, we are having an inquiry at the moment from a family in Melbourne, in Australia. Without going into too much detail, they have a family member who was in intensive care long-term for a neurological condition, now having a ventilator and a tracheostomy, and went home with support. But at that moment, they’ve only been home for a week.

Now, they’re realizing it’s not going to work, of course. How can someone go home from intensive care with the ventilator and a tracheostomy with support workers, with disability support workers? That is negligent on all ends. If support workers can all of a sudden look after ventilators and tracheostomy, why are there no support workers working in intensive care, providing care to people on life support?

So obviously, the family is now realizing that there are other options like Intensive Care at Home. So, they have heard about us, which is great, of course.

Just, if you are in a similar situation, the missing link here and we’ve established this pretty quickly, the missing link here is not having the right NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) support coordinator, because the right NDIS support coordinator knows that for clients with ventilation and tracheostomy.

The NDIS will fund 24-hour nursing care with the right evidence. The right evidence is often the doctors’ letter for 24-hour nursing care with specialist nursing assessment which we can provide here at Intensive Care at Home and also a functional assessment, capacity assessment from an occupational therapist as well as a physiotherapist. So, that’s usually some of the most important ingredients to get the NDIS to fund 24-hour nursing care with specialist nurses, intensive care nurses because you’re not looking after a ventilator and a tracheostomy, it’s not even the skill of a general registered nurse that hasn’t worked in intensive care for a minimum of two years.

When you look at the Intensive Care at Home, we are exclusively working with intensive care/critical care nurses with a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience. More than 50% of our nurses have postgraduate critical care qualification similar to most ICUs. We employ hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience in the community.

Also, we are the only service in Australia that’s third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. Furthermore, we are the only service in Australia that provides evidence-based care.

What do I mean by that? When you look at our section of the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, you will see that with the evidence-based Mechanical Ventilation Guidelines, only intensive care nurses with a minimum of two years ICU experience can patients on ventilation, tracheostomy, BIPAP, CPAP, tracheostomy without ventilation be taken home safely. Those evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines are a result of over 25 years of intensive home care nursing in Germany and for the last 10 years in Australia.

We know of at least five clients in the community here in Australia that have passed away because they didn’t have intensive care teams, 24 hours a day, in the community. So, if you are going home without the appropriate NDIS funded plan, you are putting your loved one’s life at risk. Or you might be watching this, and you might be on a ventilator, tracheostomy yourself, and if you’re still in the hospital, well, good for you. But before you’re going home, you need to engage with a service like ours.

Like I said, there’s no other service in Australia in 2024 that has third-party accreditation and NDIS accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. We have built very unique intellectual property around the service we are providing.

Now, you might be an NDIS Support Coordinator, you might be watching this, and you don’t know that it’s possible to get NDIS funding for 24-hour nursing care for clients with the conditions that I just highlighted: ventilation, tracheostomy BIPAP, CPAP, Home TPN. It’s all NDIS funded as long as you provide the right evidence. We wouldn’t be in business if it was any differently.

So, if you’re an NDIS Support Coordinator, reach out to us if you need help with funding or if you already have funding for your participants. We keep our clients at home predictably. We also provide a Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination ourselves for our participants and our clients.

Like I said, we are an NDIS, TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider in Victoria, and NDIS all around the country, iCare in New South Wales, and NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme) in Queensland, as well as the DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) all around the country. We also offer a Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS support coordination.

Now, if you have a family member in a similar situation, talk to us. We can help you with the transition. We can help you with the funding. We can help you with the advocacy. Most of the time, there is no advocacy. Most NDIS Support Coordinators don’t know how to advocate for nursing care because they have no medical or nursing background.

So, if you have a loved one in intensive care in a similar situation, and you need Intensive Care at Home, please reach out to us. We can help you take your loved one home. We provide critical care nurses at home, 24 hours a day, for a adults and children that are on ventilation with tracheostomy patients that are not ventilated but have a tracheostomy. Also, adults and children that are on BIPAP, CPAP, Home TPN, IV potassium, IV magnesium, IV antibiotics, PICC line management, central line management, Hickman’s line management, port management as well as palliative care at home.

Now, you might also be at home already and you go back to ICU all the time or back to hospital all the time. Again, we can put a stop to that. Our clients are at home predictably. We don’t have any hospital readmissions because we bring the intensive care into the home, and that means our clients stay home predictably.

Like I said, we are an NDIS approved service provider all around Australia, TAC in Victoria, NIISQ in Queensland, iCare in New South Wales, DVA approved all around the country. We have also received funding through public hospitals, departments of health, as well as through private health funds. So, please reach out to us. If you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help, we can help you there privately as well. Please reach out.

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 for a minimum of two years in critical care ICU or ED, and if you have completed postgraduate critical care qualifications. We currently have jobs in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane in Albury, Wodonga on the New South Wales Victorian border, in Bendigo in country Victoria, as well as in Warragul, Country Victoria. We want to hear from you.

What we’re looking for with our critical care nurses is really people who are committed, people who have confidence, who have resilience, who can work autonomously and as part of a team. We’re also looking for consistency. Please don’t apply with us if you’re looking for temporary or agency work. We are not an agency. We are a service provider that has a tailor-made solution for our clients and that includes consistency of the same staff that our clients know, like, and trust.

We’re also currently providing an emergency department bypass service for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District. There, we send our critical care nurses into the home to avoid ED admissions. So, if your ED is bed blocked, we can help you eliminate those bed blocks by bypassing ED and by providing ED services at home.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you because again we can help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU and ED. We want to hear from you as well.

If you are an intensive care specialist, we are currently expanding our medical team as well. If you are an intensive care specialist, and you have bed blocks in your ICU, which I know you do have, I encourage you to reach out to us as well. We can help you eliminate your bed blocks by taking your patients home, which also includes palliative care for some patients.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. 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 or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.