What to Expect: Medical Quality Outcomes and Achievements of a Multidisciplinary Inpatient Musculoskeletal System Rehabilitation

Abstract

The incidence of chronic diseases is rising. Rehabilitation plays a vital role in preventing and minimizing the functional limitations associated with chronic conditions and aging. Routine outcome measures include disease-specific and unspecific general health param- eters. This study evaluates indicators for medical quality outcomes from 10,373 patients (61.00 (cid:1) 13.65 years, 51.7% women) who have undergone orthopedic rehabilitation for three weeks. Inpatient rehabilitation reduces lifestyle-related risk factors, optimizes organ functioning and improves the well-being in the majority of patients (81.3%; SMD = 0.52 (cid:1) 0.38). Improvements of unspecific and indication specific outcome parameters can be observed in a comparable magnitude. However, disease specific and unspecific health factors are not directly related to each other (r = 0.19). Age, gender, ICD-classification and time of rehabilitation have an influence on initial values and on indication-specific medical outcomes but are insignificant with regards to improvements in unspecific medical out- come parameters. Inpatient rehabilitation includes two main pathways of medical practice, which can be clearly distinguished in terms of their therapeutic outcome. There are general health interventions, such as lifestyle modifications, diet and physical exercise, and symptom-specific treatments. So multidisciplinary medical rehabilitation improves general well-being and physical functioning as well as reduces risk factors in the majority of patients. the federal Austrian social security institutions involved in quantifying the quality of rehabilitation outcomes are the basis of this work. We provide descriptive standardized numeric indicators of the rehabilitation process as well as monocentric reference data for a 3-week inpatient orthopedic rehabilitation program. Data collection was performed by doctors and healthcare professionals during routine medical treatment. Standardized clinical characteristics of patients were recorded systematically at the time of admission and discharge. The easily quantifiable medical parameters included general health characteristics such as body measurements and