Impact of comorbidities on stroke rehabilitation outcomes: does the method matter?

OBJECTIVES

To examine the impact of comorbidities in predicting stroke rehabilitation outcomes and to examine differences among 3 commonly used comorbidity measures--the Charlson Index, adjusted clinical groups (ACGs), and diagnosis cost groups (DCGs)--in how well they predict these outcomes.

DESIGN

Inception cohort of patients followed for 6 months.

SETTING

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 2402 patients beginning stroke rehabilitation at a VA facility in 2001 and included in the Integrated Stroke Outcomes Database.

INTERVENTIONS

Not applicable.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Three outcomes were evaluated: 6-month mortality, 6-month rehospitalization, and change in FIM score.

RESULTS

During 6 months of follow-up, 27.6% of patients were rehospitalized and 8.6% died. The mean FIM score increased an average of 20 points during rehabilitation. Addition of comorbidities to the age and sex models improved their performance in predicting these outcomes based on changes in c statistics for logistic and R(2) values for linear regression models. While ACG and DCG models performed similarly, the best models, based on DCGs, had a c statistic of .74 for 6-month mortality and .63 for 6-month rehospitalization, and an R(2) of .111 for change in FIM score.

CONCLUSIONS

Comorbidities are important predictors of stroke rehabilitation outcomes. How they are classified has important implications for models that may be used in assessing quality of care.