CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF A PAYMENT METHOD FOR INPATIENT MEDICAL REHABILITATION

This article presents the results of a 3-stage Delphi survey designed to identify the policy criteria that should govern the evaluation of a lternative payment methods and guide the selection of a payment method for inpatient medical rehabilitation, The Delphi survey (n = 85) incl uded four groups of participants: consumers (n = 8), providers (n = 35 ), payers (n = 15), and health services researchers (n = 27), The Delp hi survey uncovered 16 evaluation criteria, Delphi participants evalua ted each criterion on a 10-point scale (1 = not important; 10 = greate st importance), Respondents value maximize patient/family outcome, max imize access, and maximize efficiency as the three most important crit eria, Respondents report that minimize financial risk is the least imp ortant criterion, The results from both stage 2 and stage 3 (response rate = 85%) indicate a high level of consensus across the four respond ent groups. (C) 1995 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medici ne and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation