Using Patient-Centered Outcomes Data to Support Reciprocal Learning and Improve Rehabilitation Care

Using patient-centered outcomes (PCO) data to inform individual patient care and guide health system-level learning can optimize rehabilitation outcomes. However, systematically achieving this can be challenging for a variety of reasons, including siloed activities and poor communication between team members. Due to several ways that PCO data can be used, there is a critical need for transparency among team members at all levels with respect to the overarching purpose of using these data to help answer relevant questions. The purpose of this Special Communication paper is to provide an overview of using PCO data at the individual patient and aggregate levels to support a continuous and reciprocal learning cycle. We also identify key shareholders who would benefit from using these data to improve rehabilitation care, acknowledge some specific and general challenges to using these data, provide potential solutions where applicable, and integrate a case example.