Cleveland Clinic Children's Outcomes

The WeeFIM II® System, a pediatric version of the Functional Independence Measure™ (FIM) System, documents and tracks functional performance in children and adolescents with acquired or congenital disabilities by measuring a child's need for assistance, in addition to the severity of disability. WeeFIM also provides a method to evaluate outcomes for pediatric rehabilitation programs.

The WeeFIM national database provides reports comparing individual programs against national benchmarks. The WeeFIM length-of-stay efficiency score is the most important measure of the effectiveness of a rehabilitation program because it indicates how quickly a program is able to improve a child's functional abilities. Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation's score has consistently outperformed similar facilities and the national benchmark.

The WeeFIM II System measures several metrics of functional ability including self-care, mobility, and cognition. WeeFIM measures the improvement — or gain — in these areas from the time of admission to time of discharge.

Self-care refers to how well a child is able to feed, groom, bath, dress, and complete toileting tasks including the management of bowel and bladder.

Mobility refers to how well a child is able to transfer in/out of a chair or wheelchair, on/off a toilet, or in/out of a tub or shower. Mobility also includes a child's ability to walk, crawl, or use a wheelchair, and to go up/down stairs.

Cognition refers to how well a child understands information, expresses themselves, interacts with peers, solves daily problems, and recalls information.