New Zealand registered nurses are overseeing a new rehabilitation program designed to keep older patients in their rural or urban homes.

The Waikato District Health Board’s Supported Transfer and Accelerated Rehabilitation Teams (START) has been rolled out in Hamilton, Thames and Tokoroa.

Canterbury DHB has also adopted the model with plans to implement it before July.

Nurses manage the teams with input from occupational therapists, physiotherapists and clinicians while health care assistants, with training in rehabilitation, visit the clients up to four times a day.

The new strategy comes as figures show the Waikato population is getting proportionately older, with the 65 plus age group expected to increase more than 78 percent by 2026.

Waikato DHB covers almost eight percent of New Zealand with a population of 364,200 and is the country’s largest and most rurally dispersed district health board.

Waikato DHB gerontology nursing and University of Auckland Professor Matthew Parsons said about 10 registered nurses in the Waikato region were involved in the project, along with about 30 RNs for the Canterbury region.

Professor Parsons said 178 patients had already accessed the intermediate care model.

"It’s a half way point between hospital and home. It’s a community-based service which is delivering rehabilitation in the person’s home for up to six weeks after hospital discharge," he said.

Professor Parsons said registered nurses worked with the clients to tailor individualised goal focused rehabilitation plans in association with allied health professionals.

He said the plan, which resulted in patients’ early discharge, would not lessen workloads for nurses but worked to reduce capacity issues.

"You are able to increase the capacity of each bed," he said.

"It shaves off a small amount of time from eachinpatient's stay. We want to increase the resources that we have."