The Rehabilitation Complexity Scale (RCS) in Pulmonary Rehabilitation: Utility and Limitations

Detailed Summary

In August 2021, the Italian Ministry of Health published the Ministerial Decree to define the "Criteria for the appropriateness concerning the access to hospital rehabilitation admission" (in neurological, respiratory, cardiological, and orthopedic Units), classifying patients by complexity, the severity of disability and the number of ICD-9 discharge codes. The Appropriateness Decree adopted some fundamental criteria used in the United Kingdom for over 10 years (2009) where the Ministry of Health defined 3 levels of specialized rehabilitation based on the different complexity of the patient's needs. Among the scales, the Rehabilitation Complexity Scale (RCS) has been proposed by the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine (BSRM), clearly oriented to patients with motor disabilities (neurological and orthopedic), of which the RCS-E (i.e. Extended version) is the more up to date. The Italian Ministry of Health has proposed the application of the RCS scale as a tool for measuring rehabilitation complexity based on the intensity and level of skills required in terms of nursing, medical and therapeutic care. In this Clinical Study the Investigators intend to 1. test the application of the new RCS scale to rehabilitation admissions in 16 Italian Pulmonary Rehabilitation Units 2. correlate this scale to the most universally used clinical and functional measures evaluated in the respiratory field 3. investigate the responsiveness of the RCS scale at the end of rehabilitation 4. promote an audit to revise the clinical and rehabilitation conditions -described by items of the RCS-E- to get a specific RCS referable to respiratory patients with MDC4.

Study Details

Timeline