At the intersection of chronic disease, disability and health services research: A scoping literature review.
Stephen P Gulley, Elizabeth K Rasch, Christina D Bethell and 5 others
PMID 29396271WHAT IT FOUND
Working age adults with chronic conditions and disability are defined inconsistently in health services research.
Limits in daily tasks, not diagnosis alone, help identify people who need more care.
Key findings
01Studies mostly examine chronic conditions or disability separately, not how they interact.
02Help needed with daily tasks, such as bathing, dressing, cooking, and managing money, is a common way to identify disability and service need.
03When chronic conditions are combined with functional limits and daily-task needs, the resulting groups use progressively more specialty care, hospital care, emergency visits, and home health care.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The review focused mostly on U.S. literature, so it may not apply outside the United States. It searched only Medline and PsycINFO plus selected sources, so it may have missed relevant studies. It included English publications after 2000, so older definitions and non-English work were not covered. The review describes concepts and measurement, not patient outcomes from treatment. Many included studies used different condition lists and disability measures, so the evidence is hard to compare.
Declared interests
The authors declare no funding or other conflicts of interest. The article metadata lists NIH intramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that any therapy or care model works. The review maps how studies define chronic conditions and disability; it does not test treatment effects.