My father has been in hospital for nearly 6 months. He was originally admitted for pneumonia but has had a number of illnesses in that time including renal failure so he now requires dialysis 3 times per week. I cannot drive him as I work/study and transport my two children to and from school , although I can step in to do it in an emergency.

He is in a rehabilitation hospital at the moment and I am being pressured to have him admitted to a nursing home. There are a number of problems with this.

1) There are no nursing home beds available.
2) My father requires renal dialysis 3 days a week.
- There is no government funding for transport to dialysis (except wheelchair taxis). The government funds volunteer programs to transport older people to the hairdresser but not to dialysis.
- Wheelchair taxis are inadequate as they can be unreliable. The taxi driver has no real obligation to see that the passenger is safely delivered to the right place or to ensure that he is picked up and not left waiting for hours.
- Wheelchair taxi trips are cheaper than regular taxi trips but the cost soon adds up when you are talking 6 trips a week, every week and this is for a pensioner.
- Wheelchair taxi trips are also uncomfortable for an older person. Wheelchairs are not soft like car seats they have little bounce in the seat and my father finds the trip to dialysis uncomfortable.
The rehabilitation hospital my father is in is trying to force me to consider nursing homes further and further away from where he has dialysis. This will cost him a fortune and be uncomfortable for him. At what point is it reasonable to just refuse?

3) My father needs air conditioning as he finds it difficult to breathe when the weather is hot.

4) My father has an illiostomy bag and is embarrassed about changing it etc. He would prefer to have a private room with a private bathroom. It appears this is not possible.

5) My father needs a power wheelchair to move around. It seems that many nursing homes refuse to accept power wheelchairs. Someone at a nursing home recently said “Its okay, the staff will push his chair for him”. It isn’t a substitute at all is it? I understand that nursing homes cannot allow anyone to use a power wheelchair as they must protect their residents but some nursing homes have an assessment regime in place to ensure the power wheelchair user is safe before they allow them to use the power wheelchair in the nursing home. This seems like a sensible option. I am wondering if anyone can advise me on how to handle this issue in the less progressive nursing homes.

6) There simply appear to be very few suitable nursing homes. In fact I have found only 1 that I would consider appropriate. They have only a small number of beds and I doubt if a bed will ever become available. I am not being too fussy because my father and I are considering other nursing homes, we have to evaluate where we can make compromises. The shared room appears to be the first one. I have even tried the nursing home where another relative lived with which we were not satisfied simply because it offers a lot of the criteria my father needs and it is not one of the worst nursing homes.

My father is in a Private Rehabilitation hospital. I have been told that I have 2 weeks to find him a nursing home bed or his private health insurance will cease and he will be charged personally for his accommodation, that is around $500 per day. This seems unjust to me. Is there some law against threatening patients in this way?

I feel that unfair pressure is being placed on me to find a nursing home bed of which there are none at all let alone any satisfactory beds, and I feel no chance at all of getting something I consider appropriate for my father.

My father is a very independent man. Mentally he is 100%. The thought of relying on anybody else for anything is difficult for him. He tends to be a little unrealistic about what he can do. He told me the other day the he simply hates the idea of a nursing home. He wanted to go back to his own home and had some creative (but unfortunately unworkable) ideas about how this could happen. I tried to assure him I would attempt to find him somewhere that he can be comfortable but I am not sure that I can deliver on that. I do wonder if putting him into a nursing home, particularly an unsuitable one is more likely to lead to his premature death than going home and facing all the (substantial) risks involved there.