When Should We Measure Functioning? A Comparison of Serial Measurement of the MOS SF‐36 in an Australian Hospital Sample with Australian Norms

Abstract

Objective: To compare the functional status at admission, discharge and three months post‐discharge of a group of elderly hospitalised people with a range of general hospital medical and surgical conditions with Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) community data.Method: 400 randomly selected patients aged 65 and over completed the SF‐36 survey within 48 hours of admission to Manly Hospital and within 24 hours of discharge. These patients were followed up three months post‐discharge.Results: Functional status of the hospital sample differed from the ABS data. Approximately half of the 8 hospital SF‐36 mean scores were significantly lower than the Australian norms for women and men on admission and discharge. However, by the three month follow‐up, the majority of these differences disappeared, except for women aged 75 and over.Conclusions: This study describes differences in the SF‐36 data at three points in time surrounding an acute hospital episode. The apparent differences in SF‐36 scores at admission, discharge and 3 months post‐discharge, with the lowest scores occurring at discharge has implications for planning post‐hospital services for the elderly.