Outcomes
Your recovery is measured, not described — you leave with the numbers, by instrument name.
Standardised instruments are recorded at admission, at review points and at discharge — the same ones used in rehabilitation research. Where a goal was not met, the discharge report says so and explains why.
- Instruments in routine use
- 12
- Recorded at
- Admission · review · discharge
- Reported to you
- In writing, score by score
What is measured
Which instruments apply depends on what is being rebuilt. Each one is a published, validated scale rather than an in-house score, so a clinician anywhere can read it.
Daily independence
- Functional Independence Measure (FIM)
How much help a person needs with daily activities
- Barthel Index
Independence in feeding, washing, dressing, transfers and continence
Walking
- Six-minute walk test
Walking endurance, in metres covered
- Functional Ambulation Category (FAC)
How much physical help walking requires, from none to full
Balance and falls
- Berg Balance Scale
Balance, and with it the risk of falling
- Timed Up and Go (TUG)
Practical mobility — standing, walking, turning, sitting
Movement and muscle tone
- Fugl-Meyer Assessment
Motor recovery of the arm and leg after stroke
- Modified Ashworth Scale
Spasticity — resistance to passive movement
Nerve injury and trunk control
- ASIA Impairment Scale
Level and completeness of a spinal cord injury
- Trunk Control Test
Trunk control — the foundation for sitting, transfers and walking
Thinking and memory
- Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)
Attention, memory, language and executive function
Swelling
- Limb volume measurement
Swelling, as a volume in millilitres rather than an impression
When it is measured
First week
Goals are agreed with you and your family and written down in concrete terms — a stated walking distance, an independent transfer, a specific daily task. Baseline scores are recorded on the instruments that apply to the case.
Review points
A physician in physical medicine and rehabilitation leads the case and reviews it weekly against those goals. Where the measurements are not moving, the plan is reassessed rather than continued on schedule.
Discharge
The same instruments are repeated and the scores go into the discharge report. You receive the numbers rather than a narrative, and where a goal was not met the report says so and explains why.
After you go home
Remote follow-up is arranged before you leave rather than offered afterwards, and the written home programme states what to continue, for how long, and what should be reassessed.
What you take home
Aggregate data is what a hospital owes the public. Your own data is what it owes you. The discharge report is written so that you and a clinician in your own country can see what changed, rather than being told that it went well.
If a centre cannot give you that, it is worth asking what they measured at all.
- Admission and discharge scores, named by instrument
- Each written goal, and whether it was met — with the reason where it was not
- The home programme: what to continue, and for how long
- Equipment recommendations, including what can be sourced in your own country
- What should be reassessed, and when
- Remote follow-up, arranged before you travel home
Why there is no success rate here
A single percentage — ninety-five per cent satisfaction, ninety per cent success — cannot be checked by the person reading it. It does not say who was counted, what was measured, with which instrument, or over what period. A number without its method is not evidence, and a figure published here carries its method with it: the value, the instrument, the number of people it covers and the period it comes from.
What makes any centre’s figure checkable
- A defined cohort, with the inclusion criteria stated
- One measurement protocol, applied the same way across sites
- A period long enough for the number to mean something
- A stated method for the people who did not complete the programme — leaving them out is how a mediocre result is made to look excellent
Tracked at programme level
Instruments describe the patient. These describe the programme, and they are the figures a centre is least likely to volunteer.
- The proportion of patients who complete the programme they started
- Where people go at discharge — home, onward care, or back to a hospital
- Length of stay against the length that was planned and quoted
- Unplanned transfers back to acute care during a programme
- The proportion of written treatment plans answered within the 48 hours promised
