Impact of occupational therapy in an integrated adult social care service: Audit of Therapy Outcome Measure Findings

Abstract

PurposeHealth and social care services should demonstrate the quality of their interventions for commissioners, patients and carers, plus it is a requirement for occupational therapists to measure and record outcomes. Use of the “Therapy Outcome Measure” (TOMs) standardised tool was implemented by an occupational therapy adult social care service to demonstrate outcomes from April 2020, following integration to a community NHS Trust.Design/methodology/approachThe aim was to demonstrate occupational therapy outcomes in adult social care through a local audit of the TOMs. The objective was to determine if clients improved following occupational therapy intervention in the four domains of impairment, activity, participation and wellbeing/carer wellbeing. 70 cases were purposively sampled over a 2-month timeframe, extracting data from the local electronic recording system.FindingsOccupational therapy in adult social care clearly makes an impact with their client group and carers. Evidence from the dataset demonstrates clinically significant change, as 93% of clients seen by adult social care occupational therapy staff showed an improvement in at least one TOMs domain during their whole episode of care. 79% of activity scores, 20% of participation scores and 50% of wellbeing scores improved following intervention. 79% of carer wellbeing scores improved following occupational therapy.Research limitations/implicationsThe audit did not collect data on uptake from the separate teams (equipment, housing, STAR and adult social care work) in occupational therapy adult social care. Potential sampling bias occurred as cases with completed scores only were purposively sampled. Sampling was not random which prevented data gathering on uptake of TOMs across the separate teams. Additionally, the audit results can only be applied to the setting from which the data was collected, so has limited external validity.Originality/valueThese novel findings illustrate the valuable and unique impact of occupational therapy in this adult social care setting. The integration of adult social care into an NHS Community Trust has supported the service to measure outcomes, by utilising the same standardised tool in use by allied health professions across the Trust.