Development of Wheeled Mobility indicators to advance the quality of spinal cord injury rehabilitation: SCI-High Project

This study focuses on developing indicators to improve wheelchair services for Canadians with spinal cord injuries. It follows the World Health Organization's guidelines for wheelchair service delivery, which include referral, assessment, prescription, funding, preparation, fitting, training, and maintenance. Experts developed structure, process, and outcome indicators. The structure indicator measures specialized wheelchair training of service providers. The process indicator tracks the hours of wheelchair service provided. Outcome indicators assess wheelchair skills, community participation, and confidence. The goal is to implement these indicators to improve care for Canadians with spinal cord injuries who rely on wheeled mobility, aiming for measurable progress by 2020.

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  The structure indicator examines the proportion of SCI/D service providers within a rehabilitation program who have specialized wheelchair training.
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  The process indicator evaluates the average number of hours of wheelchair service delivery provided per patient during rehabilitation.
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  The intermediary outcome indicator is a target capacity score on the Wheelchair Skills Test Questionnaire (WST-Q) at rehabilitation discharge; final outcome indicators are the Life Space Assessment (LSA) and Wheelchair Use Confidence Scale (WheelCon) scores at 18 months post rehabilitation admission.