Report finds improvements to rehabilitation services have been maintained, one year later

A year on from the completion of a collaborative to improve rehabilitation services for survivors of major trauma, a new report Rehabilitation collaborative review: 1 year on He arotakenga haumanu ngātahi: 1 tau nei shows the improvements have been sustained.

Getting access to early rehabilitation after major trauma makes a significant difference to a person’s recovery. Rehabilitation can, in some cases, be lifelong. 

From March 2021 to June 2022, a national rehabilitation collaborative run by Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission (Te Tāhū Hauora) brought together 11 teams of rehabilitation clinicians from across Aotearoa New Zealand. Their projects aimed to identify and implement new initiatives that would remove barriers to achieving the best outcomes for patients with major trauma and to increase the quality improvement skills and knowledge of rehabilitation providers.

The nine completed projects focused on traumatic brain injury, care coordination and patient experience, and several resulted in improved outcomes, including:

• improved access to ACC case management
• timely access to community follow-up
• incorporation of kaupapa Māori concepts into traditional models of rehabilitation
• enhanced patient experiences.

After 1 year, representatives from each project were interviewed by Te Tāhū Hauora to establish whether the gains from the collaborative had been continued.

Eight of the nine interviewees reported that the gains they had made during the collaborative were sustained 1 year on, and all reported that confidence with running quality improvement initiatives had increased.

Read the report below.