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Keywords

Health Information Technology, Vitality of the Profession

Abstract

The use of patient-reported outcomes in athletic training is inconsistent, limiting the ability to communicate service quality and value to key stakeholders. The objective of this study is to calculate meaningful quality outcome measures for athletic training services for lower extremity injuries in high school student-athletes. Data were collected from a subset of the National Athletic Treatment, Injury and Outcomes Network Surveillance Program and a convenience sample of high school student-athletes with patient-reported outcome measures for lower extremity time-loss injuries. Failure-toprogress proportions (FTPPs) were calculated using the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) for knee/thigh injuries and the Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM) for lower leg injuries. Additional risk-adjusted proportions and proportional differences were calculated. For knee/thigh injuries including thigh strains, FTPPs ranged from 17.1% to 45.7% across KOOS subscales. When excluding thigh strains, all patients achieved clinically important improvements. For lower leg injuries, less than 3% of patients failed to achieve clinically important improvements in FAAM subscales. Risk-adjusted proportions were comparable to observed proportions. As an indicator of quality of care, high school athletic training services for lower extremity injuries resulted in low FTPPs. These findings help demonstrate the value of athletic training services and highlight the importance of using appropriate patient-reported outcome measures. Future research should replicate these methods to build a repository of quality outcome data for athletic training services.

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