Functional assessment: bridge between family and rehabilitation medicine within an ambulatory practice

This study describes development of a functional assessment instrument used to screen ambulatory care patients who have difficulty performing daily activities. Sample selection occurred in 2 stages. In the first stage, an interdisciplinary team used clinical selection criteria in order to screen patients into 2 groups: group 1, those likely to have functional limitations; and group 2, those not likely to have functional limitations. Using clinical selection criteria for a 3-week period in an ambulatory primary care setting, it was found that 20% of the outpatients seen fell into group 1. In the second stage, a randomly selected subsample of 194 persons was used, with 97 in group 1, and 97 in group 2. The Functional Assessment Screening Questionnaire (FASQ) was tested using this second sample. The FASQ was found to discriminate between the 2 groups, with those in group 1 having a significantly greater number of functional difficulties than those in group 2. An analysis was conducted to investigate which diagnostic problems were more likely to be associated with patients reporting functional limitations. Fourteen diagnostic patient problems found to be significantly more limiting than for the total sample were identified. The factor structure of the FASQ was examined and a format for clinically integrating the FASQ factors was offered.