Integrating Occupation-Based/Focused Assessments During the Evaluation Process. Opportunity to Revisit the Topic in a Post COVID-19 Practice Setting?

Occupational therapists treat clients across the lifespan, and every successful intervention begins with a successful evaluation. Incorporating a variety of norm-referenced standardized assessments into the assessment process has become increasingly important to justify services to third party payors identification of goals, and intervention strategies. However, occupational therapists tend to select assessments that are focused and measuring performance skills and client factors versus occupations and performance of occupations. The purpose of this article is to examine the topic of occupation based and occupation focused assessments. While using occupation-based/ occupation-focused assessments is not a new topic, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how many Americans perform their daily occupations. These changes may be an opportunity for practitioners to consider integrations of standardized Occupation based and occupation focused assessments in daily practice.