Maccabi Healthcare Services Selects FOTO for Outcome Measurement in Israel
Maccabi
Healthcare Services, the second largest of four managed care organizations in
Israel, began measuring functional outcomes using FOTO software specially
developed for Maccabi in January 2005.
Maccabi's
guiding motto throughout its history has been that, "Healthcare must be in
the hands of an organization which has an encompassing commitment to the health
and welfare of its members."
As part of the efforts done towards the achievement of this commitment,
Maccabi is now gathering functional outcomes for their rehabilitation patients,
on a pilot project conducted in the Physical Therapy service, with the
customized version of FOTO’s Patient Inquiry (PI) software.
Ben
Johnston, PT, FOTO’s CEO and General Manager, says “It has been a very
rewarding challenge to create this customized version of the software for
Maccabi. We
have found a great partner in outcomes in their organization.”
The PI software was customized to operate on Maccabi’s network with
strict data security limitations, and to interface with their electronic
database, which imports patient information directly into the PI software.
Information at discharge (number of visits, treatments, diagnosis, and
patient compliance) from the Maccabi electronic medical record system is merged
into a joint database at discharge, so the clinicians do not need to fill out
the staff discharge survey.
The FOTO patient surveys have been translated into Hebrew, Russian, and
Arabic for this project and are currently being validated scientifically.
Daniel
Deutscher, PT, MSc., Maccabi's Physical Therapy quality assurance and research
coordinator, says “For many years, many of our 420 Physical Therapists,
working in more than 70 clinics throughout the country, have asked to
incorporate a tool that measures quality and treatment outcome, so that they
could learn more about how to continuously improve their patient's functional
outcomes. The use that FOTO has done of current scientific knowledge using new
statistical approaches, enabling computerized adaptive testing technology, has
made it possible to measure outcomes on a continuous basis, without too much
burden for patients and clinicians. It was important
for us to have a system that had a minimal burden on
clinical functioning, but still gives us a reliable, valid, and responsive
measure of the patient’s functional change.”