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State-of-the-Science Symposium on Postacute Rehabilitation: Setting a Research Agenda and Developing an Evidence Base for Practice and Public Policy—Executive Summary

Contact author: Allen W. Heinemann, Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, 345 E Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2654. E-mail: a-heinemann{at}northwestern.edu.

Purpose: The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Measuring Rehabilitation Outcomes and Effectiveness along with academic, professional, provider, and accreditor organizations sponsored a symposium with the aim of serving as a catalyst for expanded research on postacute care (PAC) rehabilitation. The goals were to describe the state of our knowledge regarding utilization, organization, and outcomes of postacute rehabilitation settings, identify methodological and measurement challenges, foster the exchange of ideas among stakeholders, and identify researchable questions.

Method: The symposium was organized around 4 themes: (a) the need for improved measurement of rehabilitation variables and methods to collect and analyze this information, (b) factors that influence access to rehabilitation care, (c) similarities and differences in services across PAC settings, and (d) effectiveness of rehabilitation services.

Results: Key themes included the need for improved measures, particularly of case-mix factors and treatment ingredients; the need for a uniform and coherent system of PAC; the need to attend to under- and overutilization of rehabilitation services; the need for cooperation among stakeholders to advance an effectiveness research agenda; and the desire to develop payment policies that are based on research evidence.

Conclusions: The symposium articles appear in the November 2007 issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Key Words: health policy, outcome and process assessment (health care), outcomes research, rehabilitation