Background: Medical rehabilitation seems suitable for implementing multimodal interventions for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Rehabilitation in Germany on principle requires that insurees file an application. Proactive screening for rehabilitation need has only been explored in pilot projects so far. It seems a promising attempt to assess rehab need by questionnaire especially in patients with type 2 diabetes. We do not know though how patients who have been screened positive for rehab need differ from other patients with type 2 diabetes as to their health and risk profiles. This could provide an indication of the validity of the proactive approach.
Methods: Members of an Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK) Disease Management Program (DMP) for type 2 diabetes were screened for rehab need by questionnaire. 13 diabetes-specific problem areas were assessed. Problems were assigned to 10 specific treatments (problem-treatment-pairs). Rehab need was presumed if patients needed 3 or more treatments. Patients were then compared to regular rehab patients as well as patients with type 2 diabetes from primary care medical offices.
Results: From 5500 DMP-patients 829 returned the questionnaire (return rate: 15.5%). From these 94% met the criteria for rehab need; of these 55% needed 6 or more treatments (complex problems). Patients who screened positive for rehab suffered from more health problems and had worse risk profiles as compared to patients from medical offices, and disease burden was comparable or worse as compared to regular rehab patients.
Conclusions: This indicates that proactive screening for rehab need in patients with type 2 diabetes leads to reasonable (valid) results. The very low return rate suggests that the sample may be considerably biased, though. Possibly, mainly patients with greater impairment to health responded to the screening.
© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.