Design of an instrument to measure the quality of care in Physical Therapy

OBJECTIVE To design an instrument composed of domains that would demonstrate physical therapy activities and generate a consistent index to represent the quality of care in physical therapy. METHODS The methodology Lean Six Sigma was used to design the tool. The discussion involved seven different management groups staff. By means of brainstorming and Cause & Effect Matrix, we set up the process map. RESULTS Five requirements composed the quality of care index in physical therapy, after application of the tool called Cause & Effect Matrix. The following requirements were assessed: physical therapist performance, care outcome indicator, adherence to physical therapy protocols, measure whether the prognosis and treatment outcome was achieved and Infrastructure. CONCLUSION The proposed design allowed evaluating several items related to physical therapy service, enabling customization, reproducibility and benchmarking with other organizations. For management, this index provides the opportunity to identify areas for improvement and the strengths of the team and process of physical therapy care.