PLENARY II: Better Rehabilitation Through Better Treatment Specification: The Growing Impact of the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System

Systematically evaluating and improving upon rehabilitation treatment outcomes is problematic as the specific clinician actions (i.e., ingredients) responsible for improved patient functioning (i.e., targets) are largely unknown. Rehabilitation therapies have been described as a “black box” as, unlike pharmacologic treatments, the “name” of the intervention carries little information about the active ingredients it contains. Whether described as “X hours of occupational therapy” or “a course of cognitive rehabilitation”, there is no agreed upon way to define the contents of those treatments or ask whether two patients received the same or different treatments. To address these broad issues, Dr. Whyte led the multidisciplinary team that developed the Rehabilitation Treatment Specification System (RTSS), and has been continuously involved in its further dissemination and implementation. The RTSS is a theory-based system offering systematic rules for defining all rehabilitation therapies with respect to their known or hypothesized active ingredients. Thus, the RTSS ensures that the treatment label corresponds to the ingredients accounting for its efficacy or inefficacy across individual patients. Dr. Whyte's talk will trace the development of this program of research, and its impact to date. A panel of individuals with applied RTSS-based project experience will discuss how expanded implementation of the RTSS can impact rehabilitation treatment outcomes, and the infrastructure and efforts from the field that will be required to achieve these results.