More Information on CAHE Outcomes Calculators
The CAHE Outcomes Calculator has been under development since 1999 by researchers in the Centre for Allied Health Evidence, and the School of Computing Science (University of South Australia), in a series of staged research strategies. Preliminary investigations comprised:
- Wide-spread data collection from over 2000 clinicians regarding current use of measures of health outcome in clinical practice
- Investigation of requirements of funding bodies regarding health outcomes derived from treatment by clinicians
- Literature review to assess evidence of validity, reliability, sensitivity to change and clinical utility of common measures of health outcome used by clinicians, as well as other measures of health outcome that may be useful for clinicians
- Discussions with health Australian clinicians regarding the barriers and facilitators to regular use of health outcomes in clinical practice and
- Evaluation of the content of common measures of outcome and their usage by researchers and clinicians.
The term outcome incorporates the health gain and costs associated with treatment. For the management of many conditions, this involves an episode of care (a number of linked occasions of service). Currently the most common type of outcome information is on cost, or number of contacts with the patient. Our investigations highlighted that most clinicians collect no standard information from patients on health outcome, despite this being the most important information required by health funders. What information is collected is non-standardised, collected at variable time frames throughout the episode, and is usually handwritten in patient notes, which makes it inefficient and less than useful for clinical benchmarking. The need for a simple, efficient mechanism for collecting standard information routinely on patient progress was identified from our preliminary investigations. The Outcomes Calculator software was developed to address this need.
The CAHE Outcomes Calculators aim to facilitate the use of standardised outcome measures in clinical practice to monitor change in patient status over time. Patients complete selected outcome measures prior to, or following treatment (without reference to the clinician) and the data can be entered into the CAHE Outcomes Calculator by administrative staff. This avoids the potential bias by the clinician and ensures that the patients view of their condition is recognised. The CAHE Outcome Calculator automatically computes the score for each outcome measure and uses norms for comparison, as appropriate. Summarising outcome in this way would assist in communicating patient progress, between clinicians, patients and funders.
For example, the outcome measures contained within the CAHE Musculoskeletal Outcomes Calculator have been selected based on their validity, reliability, sensitivity to detect change over time and clinical utility for patient populations frequently treated by physiotherapists. They represent a range of aspects of functioning/disability, which are measured at the level of body functions/structure, the individual and society, as defined by the International Classification of Functioning.
Details on the outcome instruments in each of the five CAHE Outcomes Calculators can be found under 'Contents' on page 2 of each of the Outcomes Calculator User Manuals.
There are now five CAHE Outcomes Calculators. Each of the CAHE Outcomes Calculators are tailored to a specific topic or field:
- Musculoskeletal
- Incontinence
- Neurological Disorders
- Chronic Disease Management
- Peripheral Joint Disorder (released in May 2008)
The CAHE Outcomes calculator is accompanied by a CAHE OC User Manual and Software Guide. We encourage users to provide feedback for evaluation, and to enable CAHE to provide additional information about new versions of the calculator.