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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. Otherwise, medically complex adults and children at home, which includes home BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), also home tracheostomy care for adults and children that are not ventilated. Also, home TPN, home IV potassium infusion, home IV magnesium infusions, home IV antibiotics. We also provide port management, central line management, as well as Hickman’s line management as well as palliative care services at home.
Today, I actually want to talk about a situation that we encountered recently, which illustrates once again why selecting a specialist service is so important and selecting a specialist service that is specialized on ventilation, tracheostomy at home that enables patients to leave intensive care if they’re stuck in intensive care long-term.
So, here’s the following situation. We had an inquiry recently for a young man who is in his 30s who is a quadriplegic. He is having a tracheostomy, and he has been discharged from hospital.
Initially, the family was hiring registered nurses online. There are a number of platforms online where the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) here in Australia allows nurses to put their skills on, like, an app, and then clients can hire directly.
They initially hired a number of registered nurses to look after their son. Now, it turns out as soon as the registered nurses showed up on the scene that they didn’t know what the tracheostomy was. Well, that’s crystal clear to me because no registered nurses are exposed to tracheostomies if they haven’t worked in intensive care for a period of time.
That is why here at Intensive Care at Home, we exclusively work with critical care nurses that have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience because that would give them sufficient exposure to work with tracheostomies.
So, needless to say that the care of the family’s son was falling apart pretty quickly, and he bounced back into hospital. Now, needless to say that the family then obviously was looking around what other options are there?
Then, eventually they found us realizing because we are a specialist service working with critical care nurses that we are the right solution for their son’s care, and that’s why going on an app and trying to select nurses there, that’s fine. It’s a bit like the Uber app, where you push the button, and the car comes here. It’s a bit like when you push the button, and the nurse comes. However, no one is checking their qualifications. No one is matching their qualifications with the right client, and that’s one of the downsides.
Now, the other thing is with those online apps, they are not sending you nurses that are working with a third-party accredited service provider, which is what we are here at Intensive Care at Home.
With Intensive Care at Home, we are, as far as I’m aware, the only provider in 2024 that has achieved third-party accreditation, including NDIS accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing. There is no other provider who achieved this level of accreditation and has built the intellectual property around it.
Not only do we work exclusively with critical care nurses with a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience, more importantly, we are employing hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience that we send into the community, which enables us to run like an ICU in the community with long-term ICU patients but they still have community access.
That’s the big difference that instead of being stuck in ICU, our clients have community access. They can participate in the lives they want to live, and I’m not stuck in an ICU. There’s a big difference there, but the bottom line is we have a team of critical care nurses in the community that can look after ventilation tracheostomy, BIPAP, CPAP, home TPN, and the list goes on. We can do it seamlessly because we’ve done it with so many clients over the last 10 years since we’ve been in business.
So, I hope that video helps you to make a decision when you have a loved one in intensive care, you want to go home or you’re at home already and you don’t have the right support, and you’re wondering, why do the nurses not know how to manage tracheostomy? Why do the nurses not know how to manage a suprapubic catheter? Why do the nurses not know how to manage a PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tube or a nasogastric tube? That is our area of expertise, and we are third-party accredited for it.
Now, with Intensive Care at Home, we are currently operating all around Australia and in all major capital cities as well as in regional and rural areas. We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) accredited service provider. We are a TAC (Transport Accident Commission) approved service provider in Victoria. iCare in New South Wales NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland). We are also a DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved service provider all around Australia. We have received funding through public hospitals, private health funds, as well as departments of health.
We are also providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination, which would also be critical in a situation like that to get on to the NDIS scheme in the first place.
It’s also very important for you to know that we practice Intensive Care at Home, according to the evidence-based Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, which you can find on our website, which once again say that you need a critical care nurse at home with a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience to look after someone on a ventilator and/or tracheostomy at home and all the other subspecialties we’re providing care for at home, such as home TPN, port access, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, BIPAP, CPAP and the list goes on. So, go and check out the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, which are evidence-based.
We are also sending our critical care nurses into people’s home or into residential aged care facilities to avoid emergency department admissions and provide an emergency bypass service. If your hospital is interested in doing the same for your emergency department, please reach out to us now here at intensivecareathome.com.
If you are an NDIS Support Coordinator and you’re looking for nursing care for one of your participants, please reach out to us as well, or if you don’t know how to go about getting nursing care through the NDIS or through other insurance scheme schemes. Please reach out to us. We can also do NDIS nursing assessments for you.
If you are a critical care nurse and you’re watching this and you have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience, ideally with a postgraduate critical care nursing qualification, we want to hear from you.
We currently have jobs in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Albury, Wodonga, Bendigo, and in Warragul in Country Victoria. So, we have a wide variety of job opportunities for critical care nurses and have the right mindset and have the right skills.
Also, I need to stress, we are a service provider that has a tailor-made solution for our clients, and we pride ourselves on that. That means if you are a critical care nurses interested in working with Intensive Care at Home, we’re really looking for staff that can give us regular availabilities and that are reliable.
Reliability is not negotiable at all. Our clients want regular staff, we want regular staff and that’s why we have a tailor-made solution to our clients. We don’t have people that come and go that doesn’t work for us. So please, only apply if you are genuine in wanting to work with us and our clients long-term so that you can get to know our clients and their families, and vice versa. want to build relationships with our clients. But also, we want to build relation a relationship with you, of course.
Now, if you’re watching this and if you are at home already or you have a family member at home already and you have insufficient support or if you are in intensive care, you and your family want to go home, or you need more support. Please reach out to us as well.
You can reach out to us at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send an email to [email protected].
If you are an intensive care consultant or an ICU specialist and you’re looking for a career change, we are also currently expanding our medical team.
If you are an ICU consultant working in ICU and you have bed blocks, we want to hear from you as well. We can help you eliminate and manage your bed blocks.
If you’re a hospital executive watching this, we also want to hear from you, once again, if you’ve got bed blocks in your hospitals, in your ICU, and in your ED (Emergency Department), we can help you eliminate all of that and you don’t even pay for it. So, please reach out to us as well.
Once again, all of that you get at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].
Lastly, if you are in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you need help, please reach out to us as well. We can help you privately, and the area where we can probably help you the most is Dallas in Texas.
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, share it far and we wide, and comment below what you want to see next for questions and insights you have from this video.
I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer questions live on the show.
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.