Project Lead
Nishani Bandaranayake
Lead partner
St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne
Hospital-based prosthetic rehabilitation currently lacks a standardised, evidence-based process to determine when patients are ready to transition to community rehabilitation, resulting in variation in clinical decision-making and prolonged hospital involvement.
My project aims to co-design and implement a criteria-led rehabilitation pathway using objective outcome measures and defined thresholds to guide rehabilitation progression and transition to community services. The project will evaluate the pathway’s feasibility and impact on patient flow, consistency of care and utilisation of specialist rehabilitation resources. By standardising discharge decision-making, the pathway has the potential to improve transition to community care, optimise resource allocation and support timely access to community-based rehabilitation. The project will establish a scalable model that could be adapted across other rehabilitation services.
The MacHSR Fellowship will strengthen my skills in health services research, implementation science and evaluation, while providing expert mentorship to guide the methodological rigour and sustainability of my project. Beyond this project, I hope the pathway will inform rehabilitation services more broadly and make a measurable difference to patient outcomes across Australia.