Beneficiaries of Rehabilitation.
Jerome Bickenbach, Carla Sabariego, Gerold Stucki
PMID 33239179WHAT IT FOUND
This paper discusses the theoretical definitions of who counts as a rehabilitation beneficiary.
It reviews frameworks from epidemiology, human rights, and health accounting to propose methods for grouping users. It reports no patient outcomes or tested treatments.
What this paper is
This is a theoretical perspective piece discussing how to define who qualifies as a beneficiary of rehabilitation services. It examines concepts from epidemiology, human rights, and health system accounting to propose frameworks for identifying user groups, but it reports no patient data, no clinical outcomes, and no tested interventions. There are no findings here to change clinical practice on.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the proposed frameworks for defining rehabilitation beneficiaries as evidence that specific clinical interventions improve patient outcomes. The paper is a conceptual discussion on how to categorize populations for policy and accounting purposes, not a report on the effectiveness of rehabilitation treatments.