What’s the Deal with Tracking Physical Therapy Patient Outcomes?

This blog post is a little different than my previous ones in that it is geared towards other physical therapists and rehabilitation providers instead of patients or their parents.

However, if you are a patient or parent, you may still find this information interesting and useful to understand just why your physical therapist cares so much about performing certain tests throughout a physical therapy plan of care.

First, what exactly do I mean by tracking physical therapy patient outcomes? Put simply, I am talking about using just about any test or measure to track a patient’s improvement over time. This could be either performance based measures (so having a patient perform a task) or self-reported measures (asking a patient to answer questions related to their perception of certain areas of their health or activity level). For example, it could be measures of strength, balance, power, range of motion, or a variety of self-reported outcome measures. Basically, it's what we do all the time!

We often do a really great job of this the first time we meet a patient and as we re-evaluate them throughout their plan of care, but often higher-level outcome measures may be tossed aside and not performed as often (I am mainly referring to tests commonly used to assess a patient’s readiness to return to higher level activities or goals such as sports). Why does this happen? I am not entirely sure, but I have some thoughts:

1. They often take more time than basic measures of strength or range of motion. Sometimes they can take up an entire session!

2. They may take more resources or equipment that some may not have access to.

3. Their setup can be complex, or we just don’t do them super often, and may not remember their setup.

4. Calculating results from these measures is time consuming, as is figuring out a concise way to document them in our electronic medical record (EMR) systems.

I think most physical therapists would agree that performing outcome measures and tracking progress over time are super important to do. It is described in length as an essential part of a physical therapists evaluation and examination by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) Guide to Physical Therapy Practice 4.0 (1). They can help us to:

• Identify impairments

• Determine whether a current plan of care or our current interventions are still appropriate or whether it needs to be modified

• Determine if patients are progressing towards their goals

• Decide whether a patient is ready to return to certain activities (i.e. sports)

• Help with prevention and health promotion

However, I too agree that they can be time-consuming to perform or sometimes we just don’t know how to fit it all in during a single PT session. On top of that we are already often struggling to find time to document our sessions, so to have to spend time calculating results can seem overwhelming.

Some clinicians are extremely lucky to work for healthcare systems with robust EMR systems that can perform calculations and results for different types of outcome measures automatically and quickly. However, for many of us, especially those of us who work for a private practice or who are solo practitioners, we often don’t have access to these EMR systems. Our process often looks something like this:

We are left to conduct these outcome measures by pen and paper,  use something like the calculator on our phone or computer to calculate their results, and then type the results into our EMR system. Needless to say it can be time consuming and just not convenient.

But, that doesn’t mean we have an excuse to not use them. They are still extremely important to assist us in our decision making and ensuring our patients receive the best care and recommendations for returning to their goals. This is an area of PT practice that I feel so passionate about. I absolutely love data and spreadsheets. I love analyzing trends and seeing graphical representations of a patient’s progress. However, I also know this is NOT everyone else’s cup of tea. That’s why I have created a new online calculator that can help you gather data from outcome measures and automatically calculate results.

The Odyssey Assessment Calculator was created simply out of frustration of spending so much time with a pen, paper, and the calculator on my phone to calculate patient results on outcome measures. I have worked with an EMR system that can automatically calculate and track everything for me and it is simply fantastic and saves so much time. However, I have also experienced the opposite of this and know firsthand how hard and time consuming it can be.

The Beta version of the Odyssey Assessment Calculator has officially launched and I am super excited to see how it can help other clinicians save time documenting, improve their patient’s outcomes and satisfaction, and improve communication between the patient, parents, and all those in the patient’s care team. This initial version is absolutely FREE, and I would love for you to try it out, let me know what you think, and share with your colleagues. Current features include:

• Automatic calculations of limb symmetry index and averages of trials performed

• Graphical representations of results

• Copy and paste results into your EMR with a single click

Currently, it is geared towards orthopedic and sports PT in that the only outcome measures that are set up so far are limb symmetry index for measures such as hop tests, strength testing, Y-balance test, etc. However, we have future plans to make it inclusive to other physical therapy specialty areas and include the following:

• Patient reported outcome measures

• Additional performance based outcome measures

• The ability to track progress over time and save your data

• Patient diaries

• The ability to create PDF reports of results for your patients or other providers

Check out the Odyssey Assessment Calculator and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear any and all feedback on how we can help save you time documenting!

Check Out the Odyssey Assessment Calculator!

References:

1. APTA Guide to Physical Therapist Practice 4.0. American Physical Therapy Association. Published 2023. Accessed 29 February 2024. https://guide.apta.org