Evidence from systematic reviews suggests that quality improvement (QI) strategies such as multidisciplinary outpatient disease management programmes are beneficial for reducing mortality, and all-cause and HF-specific hospital admissions.
This might lead to overestimation of the effect of the multidisciplinary outpatient care program.
Asking patients and therapists independently about all interventions applied will assess the compliance to the multidisciplinary outpatient care program.
The multidisciplinary outpatient care program consists of a case management protocol including a workplace intervention protocol and a GA program.
The multidisciplinary outpatient care program consists of two interventions: a workplace intervention and a graded activity intervention.
The flow of the multidisciplinary outpatient care program is shown in Figure 2. The multidisciplinary team providing the multidisciplinary outpatient care consists of the care manager, the occupational therapist, the physical therapist and the patients own medical specialist, general practitioner and occupational physician.
The primary purpose of this study is to compare the effects of a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic, including a brief group-based educational programme, with a traditional individual outpatient clinic for patients with hip, knee, hand or generalized OA.
Multidisciplinary outpatient care is a case management program consisting of a workplace intervention protocol and a graded activity (GA) program.
Subjects were recruited among those followed in multidisciplinary outpatient facilities from University hospitals in Paris, Poitiers and Lille, France.
Inpatients not commencing ART while in hospital were referred to the outpatient programme upon discharge.
