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Patient-reported measures are increasingly recognized as important for identifying gaps in the quality and safety of health care. Patient experience measures are particularly valuable because of their ability to capture distinct features of care quality that only a patient can report on, and they can do so in an objective way.

Through extensive literature review and psychometric testing, researchers at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, in partnership with the Rehabilitative Care Alliance, developed a patient experience measure for the outpatient rehabilitation setting.
The WatLX™ is a simple, effective patient experience measure developed for use in the rehabilitative care setting.

About WatLX

The WatLX™ was created following the realization that patient experience is conceptually different from patient satisfaction. The need arose to develop a framework for understanding patient experience in order to explore its use as a measure of health system performance. We conducted a systematic review of survey instruments meant to measure patient experience in a rehabilitative care setting. Of the 33 articles that met inclusion criteria, 502 survey questions were extracted and categorized into six different dimensions of patient experience. These included:

  • rehabilitative care ecosystem;
  • client and informal caregiver engagement;
  • patient and health care provider relation;
  • pain and functional status;
  • group and individual identity;
  • and open ended.

We selected and revised 10 key questions that spanned all six domains and these comprised the WatLX™. The chosen questions underwent face and content validation with several stakeholders who were older adults and caregivers, health care providers, and health care decision makers in rehabilitative care. Cognitive interviewing was completed with older adult members of the Seniors Helping As Research Partners (SHARP) group to test usability and performance of the tool.

We have since psychometrically tested the WatLX™ in two Southwestern Ontario locations as well as in provincial proof of concept study in Ontario. This work has provided evidence that the WatLX™ is feasible, valid, and reliable.

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