Impact of Frailty on Acute Rehabilitation Outcomes: An Observational Study in a Regional Australian Context

Abstract

Aims

To determine associations between frailty and patient outcomes for participants in an acute rehabilitation program.

Methods

Retrospective participant data (n = 987) was extracted, and correlations between the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and patient outcomes (FIM^TM, FIM^TM Efficiency, LOS, Discharge Destination, Unexpected clinical complication) were examined through statistical analysis (Logistic regression, ANCOVA, Kendall’s Tau, odds ratios).

Results

The study cohort was 49.1% female and 50.9% male, averaging 82.3 years of age. FIM^TM was weakly correlated with frailty, with both extent and efficiency declining with increasing frailty. This was statistically significant, despite being weak (p < 0.001). There was a similar correlation between increasing CFS and less favorable discharge destination. CFS was not a reliable indicator of LOS nor unexpected clinical complication.

Conclusions

More frail patients often benefited from rehabilitation, and frailty score alone should not be used to select acute rehabilitation inpatients.

Keywords:

• Acute rehabilitation
• frailty
• functional independence measure
• functional outcomes
• rehabilitation

Acknowledgements

Kate Andersen is grateful to the clinicians in the Acute Rehabilitation team who delivered the intervention to the frail patients in this study, and assessed patients for frailty.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, KA. The data are not publically available due to ethical restrictions, and requests for data would be subject to ethical review by the Committee approving this study.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.