FOTO Measurement Tools Effective Across the Post-acute Spectrum

Broad Cross-section of Rehabilitation Patients Included in FOTO Database

Focus on Therapeutic Outcomes, Inc., the world’s oldest and largest outcomes database for rehabilitation patients containing over 1.8 million episodes of rehabilitation therapy is effective across a broad spectrum of post-acute settings.

Researchers using the FOTO database have been prolific and now boasts 33 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

In one of those articles, (Hart and Wright, 2002), FOTO examined patients from a "total of 715 acute, orthopedic outpatient centers and 62 long-term care facilities in 41 states participating with FOTO". Some patients (n=2,858) were treated in a variety of post acute rehab facilities. "The largest group of patients suffered from cerebrovascular accidents, followed by patients with orthopedic conditions (e.g., total hip replacements), pain syndromes (e.g., chronic spinal pain syndromes), or neurologic conditions (e.g., multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease)."

The paper describes an early version of FOTO’s outcomes measures for patients with medical and neurological as well as orthopedic conditions. Moreover, findings from recent (and ongoing) analyses on patients with medical and neurological conditions using FOTO’s new computerized adaptive testing (CAT) (n>8,000) supported the validity of the FOTO functional status (FS) measure for all of the above mentioned groups of patients.

These findings have significance for therapists, providers, facilities and payers who need to track outcomes across the post-acute continuum.  The findings, based on a large subset of patients, continue to position FOTO as the leading functional outcomes database.