6 days ago
Country dialysis patient faces choice of moving to Adelaide or stopping treatment
Move to Adelaide or stop accessing life-saving medical support.
These are the options Chris Thomas, a 68-year-old Crystal Brooke resident in the mid-north of South Australia, faces.
The retired farmer has been receiving treatment in the Lyell McEwin Hospital in Adelaide since May after he had two major cardiac arrests while undergoing rehabilitation following the amputation of a leg.
This is in addition to him needing regular dialysis, treatment he had been receiving in Port Pirie for the past four years.
Given his complex medical conditions, Mr Thomas was told he was not medically fit to be discharged from hospital or for transfer to Port Pirie.
So now he and his family are facing the tough choice: move to Adelaide or effectively give up medical support.
His daughter Alex Thomas was disappointed more effort hadn't been made to find alternative options for her father given he had lived in the country his whole life and didn't want to move to the city.
"And that when you're vulnerable and when you reach your 11th hour of life that you're going to be able to stay within your home no matter what your postcode is."
Ms Thomas has made an impassioned plea to SA Health to investigate options that would allow her father to return home and keep receiving treatment.
"I want them to honour his desire to go home," she said.
"I want them to cease discriminating against him because he lives in a regional area."
SA Health Minister Chris Picton said his office had reached out to Mr Thomas's family, and there would be a senior medical review of his case to "see what options could be available".
"We provide dialysis services right across the state, but there are obviously some levels of medical conditions that people have where they do need to be in a tertiary hospital setting," Mr Picton said.
"Ultimately, in a state like South Australia, we can't provide the quaternary level of hospital care and the sub-speciality level of hospital care in each locality of everywhere across regional South Australia.
Satellite dialysis units and home dialysis services are available across a number of the state's metropolitan and regional health services, but are designed to care for less complex and lower-risk patients.
In a statement, SA Health extended its "sincerest sympathies to Mr Thomas and his family, who are navigating an incredibly difficult time".
"Due to Mr Thomas's ongoing, high-risk medical issues, he is not medically fit for discharge from Lyell McEwin Hospital, or for transfer to Port Pirie," the statement said.
"The health and wellbeing of our patients is always our priority.
Ms Thomas however said that it was important to her dad, who had worked as a farmer and pastoralist as well as at Roxby Downs, that he spend the rest of his days living and receiving treatment in the bush.
"It's his choice, no-one is more acutely aware of his mortality than he is," Ms Thomas said.
"If he moves to Adelaide he is going to be grossly isolated from everything he has ever known.
SA Health staff said at no stage had Mr Thomas or his family been advised that he should withdraw from medical care.
The Port Pirie Satellite Dialysis Unit offers expert care in renal dialysis; like other satellite dialysis units, Port Pirie offers care for stable, lower-complexity patients.
