Abstract
Background: Annual rehabilitation service tables contain case and session counts across heterogeneous service categories. Their ratio can describe recorded activity, but it is not necessarily the mean number of sessions received by an individual patient. Category composition can further influence comparisons between geographical units. We examined the Northern analytical grouping while preserving all thirteen Saudi administrative regions as comparators.
Methods: We reconstructed the reported counts in Ministry of Health Statistical Yearbook 2024 Tables 4-47 and 4-48. Official administrative regions were retained and combined into five separately defined analytical groupings. We calculated total session-to-case ratios and a restricted ratio using physiotherapy, orthotics/prosthetics and other services. Category standardization used the national case distribution across those three categories as a common set of weights. Occupational therapy and hearing/speech/swallowing were retained descriptively but excluded from standardization because some regional case denominators were zero. Source inspection preceded protocol drafting, making this an exploratory reconstruction. No patient linkage, clinical severity adjustment or sampling inference was claimed.
Results: Northern recorded 20,934 cases and 26,956 sessions. Its total session-to-case ratio was 1.288. Across the three eligible standardization categories, it recorded 20,924 cases and 26,944 sessions, yielding an observed restricted ratio of 1.288 and a category-standardized ratio of 1.209. The national standard weights were 0.3764 for physiotherapy, 0.1121 for orthotics/prosthetics and 0.5114 for other services. Northern administrative-region standardized ratios were 1.215 in Tabuk, 1.142 in Hail, 1.247 in Northern Borders and 1.163 in Al Jouf. The five-group standardized ratios were 2.165 in Central, 1.786 in Western, 1.770 in Eastern and 1.205 in Southern. National case and session totals reconciled with the source.
Conclusions: Category composition contributes to the interpretation of recorded session-to-case ratios, but the standardization does not identify clinical need, appropriate treatment dose, patient recovery or service quality.
Keywords
- Rehabilitation
- Physical Therapy Modalities
- Facilities and Services Utilization
- Health Services Administration
- Saudi Arabia
Declarations
- Ethics approval
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- Consent to participate
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- Consent for publication
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- Funding
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- Competing interests
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- Author contributions
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- Data availability
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- Registration
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- Acknowledgements
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