Background Rehabilitation in Norway is characterized by a lack of coordination across levels of care, and by large variations in content and quality. A means to monitor the quality of care is to use quality indicators (QI), which are related to structure (the settings in which care is given), process (what is actually being done) or outcome of health care.

Objectives To develop and test a set of quality indicators for rehabilitation of people with RMDs.

Methods The QI set was developed following the Rand/UCLA Method and pilot-tested for validity and feasibility in 29 specialist and primary care rehabilitation units. Pass rates were recorded in telephone interviews with managers of the rehabilitation units (structure QIs (yes/no)), or patients (process and outcome QIs (yes/no)). Time use and participants rating of face validity on a numeric rating scale (0–10, 10=high validity) were recorded. Separate QI pass rates and summary QI pass rates were calculated.

Results A total of 164 patients (mean (SD) age 58.5 (16.5) years and 76% women) participated. Mean (range) validity score for managers/patients was 8.3 (8)/7.9 (9), and mean answering time was 6.0/5.5 minutes.

A 100% summary pass rate was reached by only two of the rehabilitation units and 4% of the patients.

Conclusions To our knowledge this is the first QI set developed to measure QI pass rates for rehabilitation of RMDs. The results indicate that the QI set is acceptable to respondents, and it's validity and feasible format make it suitable for monitoring quality of rehabilitation. The large variety in pass rates suggests a high potential for quality improvement in rehabilitation.

Disclosure of Interest None declared