Outcome measures in the rehabilitation of older adults

An essential prerequisite to measuring activity and productivity is some understanding, however rudimentary or postulated, of the relationships between the components of the process and its outcomes. Successful measurement may confirm and consolidate and even develop further these relationships. Alternatively, it may refute, or at least, raise new questions for exploration. These might be thought of as the internal advantages of valid and reliable measurement. The external advantages include the ability to communicate with others for purposes of establishing apt comparisons, and to resist that evolution of health care of the elderly, which is increasingly measured in terms of dollars and cents, pounds and pence. In short, it is a numerical way of defying the accountants.