Assessment tools: functional health status and patient satisfaction.

This article addresses an aspect of outcomes assessment that includes outcomes from the perspective of the patient; namely, functional health status and patient satisfaction. For rehabilitation care they are the only outcomes that can be measured. Measurement tools exist and are being used to quantify the qualitative perspectives of patient care to produce valuable information about the quality and the efficiency of rehab services. The biggest challenge is lack of standardization to allow comparability of data. Different users bring different perspectives to the issue. The researcher, the software developer, the health care facility, and the payer all have an interest in using functional status and patient satisfaction to evaluate outcomes.