Introduction: Despite the emerging role of indicators for the evaluation of quality of care in physical therapy, these have been developed mainly for other health areas and only some are relevant and applicable to physical therapy as they lack specificity since they were not designed for the profession. Objective: To identify quality indicators described or developed in the literature that can be used to evaluate quality (QI) in the provision of physical therapy services. Methodology: we searched Medline, Embase, Web of science SciELO, LILACS and OPEN GREY databases, with no year limit. Two reviewers independently selected the studies if they were published in Spanish, English and Portuguese and if they described the development of quality indicators specifically for physical therapy practice. The methodological quality of the studies was assessed using the Appraisal of Indicators through Research and Evaluation (AIRE) instrument. The CIs found were classified following the Donabedian model. Results: 8 sets of CIs developed for physical therapy were identified, with a total of 199 potential indicators. Sixty-two point five percent (n=5) of the identified CI sets were process-related and most indicators were developed for the care of musculoskeletal pathologies applicable to the clinical area. No indicator achieved a score higher than 50% in all domains, 62.5% of the total CIs achieved this score in two domains and 37.5% in three domains. Conclusions: the applicability and implementation of the CIs in current practice is possibly limited by the lack of pilot tests of the same and that most of them are specifically designed for their respective national contexts taking into account their health system, so their international adaptation could be minor.
publication date
July 7, 2021 8:21 PM
Research
keywords
Health Care Outcome Evaluation
Health Care Quality Indicators
Indicators for the evaluation of the quality of care in physiotherapy
