Agreement Between Single Raters and Team Rating When Applying the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health's Rehabilitation Set.
Malan Zhang, Yun Zhang, Minghong Sui and 5 others
PMID 38047475WHAT IT FOUND
A multidisciplinary team assessing patients with the ICF Rehabilitation Set reached the same conclusions as a single rater and took the same amount of time.
This suggests teams can share the assessment burden without losing accuracy or slowing down care.
Key findings
01Team ratings and single-rater ratings showed moderate to high agreement across all categories, with weighted kappa coefficients ranging from 0.43 to 0.92.
02There was no significant difference in the time taken to complete an evaluation between a single rater and a team.
03Agreement was highest for objective physical tasks like walking and lowest for subjective areas like interpersonal interactions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study was conducted only in tertiary rehabilitation hospitals in China, so results may not apply to community or rural settings. Quota sampling was used, which does not represent the full patient population. The study did not interview patients or raters to understand their perspectives on the assessment process. Agreement was lower for subjective categories, suggesting that single-rater consistency may vary more in complex psychosocial domains.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume team rating is universally faster or more accurate for every domain. While overall agreement was high, subjective categories like interpersonal interactions showed only fair agreement, meaning team consensus in these areas may still require careful discussion or a single expert opinion.