Many OTs feel their work isn’t valued, but here’s a difficult truth. We could be doing more to capture the data that will help others see the value of our work. I’m talking about tracking the outcomes that show the difference we’re making in our client’s lives.

In this article I’ll run through 10 common reasons why you may not be tracking your outcomes, and one quick tip for each that may help you overcome the barrier.

1.There’s no funding for follow-up

Pretty hard to track outcomes when there’s no money available to pay for your time to come back and follow-up things like AT or home mods. This is a reality within both the NDIS and Aged Care settings in Australia, and I’m sure it’s a similar story overseas.

Quick tip: At least get your client on your side from the start. Explain how the process isn’t finished when the AT is delivered. Explain how, when and WHY the follow-up is needed to ensure long-term success.

2.The client forgets to tell us

In the OT world, it’s pretty common to spend hours writing a long report (e.g. FCA or SIL application), or completing an AT application, and submitting it, only to never hear anything about it ever again! We’re kept out of the loop in many funding schemes and our clients may not have the capacity to fill in the gaps.

Quick tip: Set your own alarms! Whenever you submit a report or application, work out when it would be reasonable to start chasing, and then put a task in your calendar to follow-up or delegate the task to admin.

3.Client chooses not to tell us

We’ve heard the narrative in the media – “OTs are expensive and charge way too much.” While we know it’s not true, you can’t blame your client for believing it. With this in mind, if everything seems OK with their mods, AT, or the strategies you told them in a capacity building session, they’re not going to see the value in getting you back involved for another visit.

Quick tip: Provide a range of follow-up options, from a comprehensive home visit, through to a quick phone call with admin staff asking some screening questions, so your client feels it’s not a 2-hour visit or nothing at all.

4.Our autopilot forgets about follow-up

When you’ve been working in an environment with points 1, 2, and 3 being the norm, we can start to make the assumption that follow-up isn’t funded or possible, so our autopilot decides to end our OT process once the AT has been delivered, or the therapy sessions have been completed. It goes into the ‘too-hard’ basket and gets forgotten, even when we could have made it happen.

Quick tip: Create a visual workflow that shows your OT service provision process and make sure follow-up is included in this as a default step for all. We may not always be able to tick it off, but it should always stay on the list.

5.We don’t set goals

If we want to measure outcomes, we need to be working towards a measurable goal. The problem is, many have forgotten about or purposely avoid SMART goals because they can be clunky or wordy.

Quick tip: Use AI to help! Don’t give away confidential client details, but AI can help you reword a functional difficulty and therapy plan into a goal you’ll be able to measure!

6.There’s goals, but they’re too broad

Sometimes the issue isn’t that the goal doesn’t exist, but that the goal was never going to be achievable in the time available to us. We start with a new client, map out all the ways we could help, and start working away at bits and pieces without a clear plan or client journey. At the end of 12 months, we feel like we’ve ticked off lots of little things, but the big broad goal we set at the start remains a distant hope.

Quick tip: Set your big broad goal, but don’t forget about the little goals needed to get there. Track progress and record when the little goals are achieved so you’ll be able to celebrate a win.

7.There’s no baseline data for comparison

You get your new client and you’re excited to dive right in, so you start your therapy sessions or launch into equipment trials and maybe you even set some goals. But did you measure exactly what your client’s function, related to that goal, looked like before you started? You can’t see how much improvement you’ve made in an ‘after’ therapy measurement, if you don’t have the baseline data to compare to.

Quick tip: Know what improvement will look like for your client and get some baseline scores. It could be through using a standardised outcome measure, or even just tracking how long a task takes, or how many instances of help were required.

8.Outcome measures confuse you

So, Clare says ‘use an outcome measure’ but do you know which one might be suitable for your client? Do you know where you can find them and how to choose an option that is valid to use with your client and that is sensitive enough to track changes over time?

Quick tip: There are many freely available outcome measures on the internet. You could ask AI for a suggested outcome measure, or my recommendation would be to start with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab or NovoPsych to do some old-school manual browsing.

9.Outcome measure scoring scares you!

Maybe you’re confident enough finding an outcome measure, but how confident are you in interpreting the results? Are you able to understand what the scores mean and how to focus on the important bits in your report that will highlight the change in function? Or will the meaning get lost in tables and numbers?

Quick tip: You may be able to find a YouTube video that explains an outcome measure, but sometimes chatting as you learn is better. Join a Your OT Tutor membership for plenty of opportunities to ask me anything!

10.I’m tracking client outcomes, but can’t pull it together when I need it

You may have been one of the many OTs who wrote advocacy submissions to highlight the value of OT work, but were you able to provide specific examples that demonstrate that value in dollar figures, time saved, or client growth? Can you easily access that sort of data in a bulk way when you need it?

Quick tip: Find a system that works for you. It could be an old-school spreadsheet, or a new AI program, but as you start to change your approach to tracking outcomes, build a system around it that will help you access the data easily.

My final thoughts…

Yes, it’s important for OTs to be tracking the outcomes we can achieve with our work. Yes, it’s hard to track outcomes for a number of reasons. But yes, it should 100% not become your autopilot approach to skip the follow-up step all together.

Choose one of those tips that resonated the most with you and make that change this week. You don’t have to change everything at once, but the best way to start chipping away at something big, is to begin!

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