In the early 1980's, a national task force was convened and a grant written with a goal of developing a method to document the severity of patient disability and outcomes of medical rehabilitation. As a result, the FIM™ instrument was established to promote a common language to describe disability across all rehabilitation disciplines and to provide a basis to compare rehabilitation outcomes and the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation (UDSMR®) was created to manage the data. The FIM™ instrument is currently used in over 1,400 facilities nationally and internationally. Data is collected at admission and discharge from inpatient rehabilitation and at a post-discharge point, usually 80-180 days. Other instruments developed by UDSMR include the WeeFIM® instrument and the LIFEware® instrument.
Functional Outcomes
A royalty-free license was given by UDSMR® to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to include the FIM™ instrument as part of the Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Patient Assessment Instrument (IRF-PAI) beginning January 2002. This data is required to be collected at admission and discharge by all designated acute rehabilitation facilities and submitted to CMS as part of their Prospective Payment System (PPS). Follow-up data is currently not part of the system but remains a critical component of outcomes for program evaluation, quality indicators, accreditation, marketing and research.
MedTel Outcomes LLC offers over 20 years of experience as the leader in telephone data collection of post-discharge functional outcomes using the FIMTM instrument, the WeeFIM® instrument and the LIFEware® instrument. Our clinicians assess thousands of patients on a monthly basis.
MedTel Outcomes is a licensed follow-up vendor with UDSMR®. This provides your facility with the following benefits:
  • Data collected by clinical staff that has passed the current UDSMR® credentialing exam
  • Permission to collect follow-up data using the copyrighted UDSMR® instruments, including the FIM™, WeeFIM® and LIFEware®
  • Access to UDSMR® software products, including web-based programs, updates to existing software and data file layouts, which are necessary to facilitate easy data import and export
  • Collaboration on reporting and integration of new technology

We also offer data collection on many other recognized instruments to provide facilities with data outcomes that meet their needs.

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