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TBI-45

Impact of Systems of TBI Rehabilitation On Outcome: Challenges in Cross-National Research

Presentation Type:

Symposium

General Subject Classification:

Community Integration/Participation

Time / Location:

Tue, 6/14, 11:00 AM
Lincoln East

Presenter(s):

Objectives:

  • Participants will be able to identify challenges to conducting experimental studies of service delivery and outcomes from TBI.
  • Participants will be able to identify contrasting advantages and challenges to conducting research on "natural experiments" comparing different service delivery systems.
  • Participants will be able to describe 3 key differences in the service delivery systems studied in this research on US (MossRehab) and Danish (Hvidovre/Glostrup) systems.

Abstract:

It is hypothesized that differences in rehabilitation treatment duration, intensity, and organization may influence outcomes after TBI. Studying this experimentally is very challenging because of the lack of an agreed taxonomy for characterizing treatments received and the fact that payment constraints in the US reduce variability along these treatment dimensions that might otherwise be studied observationally. For these reasons investigators in Philadelphia and Copenhagen undertook an observational study of TBI outcome within 2 very differently organized rehabilitation service delivery systems, attempting to exploit a natural experiment. In this symposium the investigators will contrast the advantages and challenges of experimental and observational studies of service delivery, discuss some of the specific cultural challenges associated with designing this study, and present preliminary data on differences in the nature, duration, and intensity of services delivered in the 2 systems of care, which will later be analyzed for their effects on outcome.

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