Functional progression of a patient through a rehabilitation program

This article has described a FTA as one means for facilitating progression of a patient through a rehabilitation program. Individual clinicians need to design their own FTA based on their patient population, available equipment, and space considerations. It is recommended that the FTA be based on objective criteria with integrated clinical judgments so that patients can be progressed safely and rapidly through their rehabilitation program. Because of imposed limitations on rehabilitation by managed care in today's health care system, using a FTA can increase the efficiency of the clinician. The FTA allows the clinician always to know where the patient is in the rehabilitation program because of the serial testing. Physical therapy treatments and home program can then be based on test results. The patient's progression can be more goal oriented, more efficient, and less time- consuming. The FTA is a systematic, objective, progressive testing sequence that forms the scientific and clinical rationale for testing a patient to determine his or her status, then using the FTA results to guide the appropriate rehabilitation program. The emphasis is on the goals and the patient's accomplishments and successes and has been an effective tool in the authors' hands.