We have had several blog posts in the past discussing the importance of understanding Physical Therapy outcomes, stressing that not all outcomes measures are the same. There are many different ways to assess the success of your Physical Therapy practice: visit utilization, case duration, downstream costs and measuring functional change are just a few that are frequently touted by different Physical Therapy organizations. But one factor that is frequently overlooked and not addressed is risk-adjusting the outcomes data. This includes taking the patient’s characteristics that commonly influence outcomes and using them to adjust outcomes according to the influence these variables have. This allows for a fair comparison between patients.
How important is risk adjusting data when looking at patient outcomes? A new study to be published in the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy states that 70% of Physical Therapy clinics are incorrectly ranked in quality ratings due to their lack of risk adjusting patient data in their functional outcomes. (https://goo.gl/FQCeSQ).
This makes sense. Take for example a post-operative rotator cuff tear that receives Physical Therapy. One would surmise that a healthy 17 high school athlete with no prior history would have a better outcome than a 65-year-old, obese, diabetic person with the same condition. However, if you are not risking the outcome based on the patient characteristics, these patients are thrown into the exact same data set when comparing outcomes. This is just one extreme example, but it is easy to see how patient characteristics can influence an outcome, and how this is not an apples to apples comparison.
Results Physiotherapy is proud to utilize Focus on Therapeutic Outcomes (FOTO), the only predictive risk-adjusted outcomes tool used for rehabilitation. FOTO has over 21 million patient assessment in their database, which allows for accurate prediction of patient performance and clinic ratings based on risk-adjusted effectiveness. This allows us to have confidence in our rating as a provider that ranks in the top 10% nationally for effectiveness, a combination of utilization and functional improvement.
To learn more about FOTO, visit https://www.fotoinc.com/.
