Functional status measures for integrating medical and social care.
OBJECTIVE
Identify standard self-report questions about functioning suitable for measuring disability across integrated health and social services.


BACKGROUND
Functional activities can be validly grouped according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) chapters of mobility, self-care, and domestic life.


METHODS
Cross-sectional analysis using information on 112,601 persons interviewed as part of the United States National Health Interview Survey on Disability. We combined related sets of questions and tested the appropriateness of their groupings through confirmatory factor analyses. Construct validity was addressed by seeking to confirm clinically logical relationships between the resulting functional scales and related health concepts, including number of physician contacts, number of bed days, perception of illness, and perception of disability.


RESULTS
Internal consistency for the summed scales ranged from 0.78 to 0.92. Correlations between the functional scales and related concepts ranged from 0.12 to 0.52 in directions consistent with expectations.


CONCLUSIONS
Analyses supported the 3 ICF chapters.


CONCLUSIONS
The routine collection of this core set of functions could enhance decision-making at the client, professional, organizational, and policy levels encouraging cooperation among the medical and social service sectors when caring for people with disabilities.
Stineman
Margaret G
MG
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Center for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. mstinema@mail.med.upenn.edu
Ross
Richard N
RN
Maislin
Greg
G