Why Measure Patient Experience in Physical Therapy?

Patient experience is an important component of quality and patient centered health care not fully explored in physical therapy.

This article addresses (1) concept of patient experience, (2) importance of capturing the patient experience, (3) measures to capture patient experience and whether these measures exhibit psychometrically sound measurement properties, (4) relationship between patient experience and clinical effectiveness outcomes, and (5) clinical applications of patient experience measures in the outpatient physical therapy setting, including suggestions for future studies.

Employing patient experience measures into physical therapy practice may be an important key to improve clinical effectiveness outcomes and provide excellent patient-centered care delivery. An area of continued research should be focused on demonstrating the generalizability and measurement properties of patient reported experience measures for the musculoskeletal outpatient physical therapy population focusing first on the most common musculoskeletal conditions such as cervical, low back, and shoulder pain.