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KCE reports vol.40 APPENDICES Physiotherapy 33
5.7. HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEM
5.7.1. Network of physiotherapists
A network of physiotherapists 13 - . which could be compared to a sentinel system - was established in
2001. It comprises 40 primary care practices in which +/- 100 physiotherapists routinely record data
on their activities, collecting information on +/- 12.000 treatment-episodes per year.
Physiotherapists were recruited in the network on a voluntary basis; they receive some financial
incentive for participating in the project and a yearly feed-back on the data collected. Overall
distribution of physiotherapists in the network is similar to the distribution of physiotherapists in the
Netherlands as regards sex, age, and number of physiotherapists per practice.
A standard commercial software commonly used by physiotherapists was adapted to serve the
project purpose. Data are entered directly in the computer and sent electronically to the project
coordination office.
The main unit of analysis is the treatment episode. Apart from standard patients administrative,
demographic, and socio-economic data, the following variables are collected:
diagnosis (as written on the referral form; ICPC-coding is done at
central level)
duration of complaints
use of a specific treatment guideline (11 possible treatment guidelines
available)
treatment objectives: 2 dimensions: activities (activiteiten), and body
functions (lichaamsfuncties), derived from ICF concepts
treatment method (verrichting) various codes including manual
treatment, physical treatment (TENS ) etc
number of sessions (dates of patient s visits)
reason for terminating treatment (objectives are reached, patient has
moved, is no more insured, etc
treatment results (objectives are completely reached, partially reached,
not reached )
This system provides a wealth of information on physiotherapy and is able to monitor trends such as
the use of guidelines, of physical techniques, the impact of various reforms on duration of treatment
episodes. For instance, physical techniques (such as TENS or ultra-sounds) were used in +/- 10% of
the treatment episodes in 2002; it now seems to be decreasing.
5.7.2. Standardised electronic reporting
KNGF has issued guidelines on standardised reporting for physiotherapy (6).
Data to be registered during the care process are grouped in 8 categories. Each category contains a
set of basic (necessary) variables and a set of plus (optional ) variables.
Diagnosis process Therapeutic process
1) Administrative data and referral process 5) Treatment plan
2) Anamnese 6) Treatment
3) Clinical exam 7) Evaluation
4) Analyse 8) Closure of episode
13 National Information Network for allied Health Care (Landelijke informatievoorziening Paramedische Zorg,
or LiPZ netwerk)