The future of rehabilitation for older Australians.

The rehabilitation of people with frailty takes time,5 and hospitals are under pressure to reduce patients' stays in hospital (the median rehabilitation length of stay reported by Soh and his co-authors was 20 days1). Key priorities are to build the capacity and competence of primary health services to provide general rehabilitation services to older people, and to improve networking of and collaboration between primary care and specialist rehabilitation units. Some health services have worked through these intersectoral problems and have articulated a model that could be implemented broadly in Australia.11 Australia urgently needs a national rehabilitation strategy to reduce overreliance on hospital services for functional recovery and rehabilitation treatments. [Extracted from the article]