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Outcome measures at the bedside — functional tests

Functional tests recorded on the visit card: the practice catalog, search by category and body region, a score with an interpretation, and favorites that shorten the path to the tests you use every day.

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Reviewed: 2026-08-24

Heltio measures the effect of therapy with three different tools and they are easy to confuse. Functional tests are individual manoeuvres performed in the room — Lachman, McMurray, sit-to-stand — recorded on the visit card together with a score and an interpretation. This article is about those.

Questionnaires filled in by the patient, and goals with a threshold of meaningful change, are a separate tool, described in outcome tracking. Neurological scales at the bedside — Barthel, NIHSS, mRS, Ashworth, Brunnström — belong to the hospital line and are recorded from the inpatient stay, not from the visit card.

Open the active session

How to do it

01

Go to the Functional Tests section

Tests are recorded on the Visit Card — the fourth note format, opened from the active session of a visit. The section is called Functional Tests, and the field with the list of chosen manoeuvres is Test Results.

02

Find a test in the catalog

Three routes lead to the same catalog:

  • Search tests by name, description or tag… — type at least two characters.
  • The Category and Body region drop-downs — they work on their own, without typing a name. Heltio shows only the values that will actually return something at this practice, so an empty result does not come from the choice in the list.
  • Nothing typed and nothing chosen — under the field you then see Most used in this clinic, the tests your team records most often. Once you narrow it down, the heading changes to Matching tests.

Clear removes the typed text and both filters at once.

03

Record the result

Clicking a test adds a card below the list. The card has four fields:

  • Score — the value as you record it in practice: "positive", "14 s", "4/5".
  • Numeric score — the same manoeuvre expressed as a number, where that makes sense. It is the one Heltio can later build a comparison from.
  • Interpretation — what that result means for this patient.
  • Notes — the rest: examination conditions, deviations, observations.

For tests that have their own scoring, a Scoring guide appears above the fields — expand it to see the thresholds straight from the catalog.

Under the test cards stands the Test Narrative Summary field — a place for a description in words of the whole examination, not for the result of a single manoeuvre.

04

Pin the tests you do every day

The star next to each entry is Add to favorites. Pinned tests appear right at the top, before you start searching, in two groups: My favorites and Clinic favorites. You set the order in your own list by dragging the entries.

The list shared by the whole practice is kept by the owner or the administrator under Settings → Clinic favorites. You can hide an entry from that list for yourself with Hide for me and bring it back with Restore for me — without removing it from the team.

Open the practice favorites

05

Read the results from the patient's history

On the patient record, in the visit history, every visit has a Functional Tests section with the columns Test, Score and Notes. A visit with no recorded manoeuvre shows No tests. That is where you compare the same examination from a month ago with today's.

When something goes wrong

Info

No tests found

What this means: The name you typed, or the filter you chose, does not match any entry in the catalog.

What to do: The catalog is in English — try the original name. If you are searching by **Category** and **Body region** at once, drop one of them with **Clear**.
Info

No tests recorded yet — search or pick a category above.

What this means: The most-used list is computed from manoeuvres recorded at this practice, and none has been recorded yet.

What to do: Start from the search. After a few visits the list fills itself in.
Warning

Maximum 50 favorites in this category

What this means: The limit of pinned entries has been reached — counted separately for your own list and the practice list, and separately for each kind of catalog.

What to do: Take something off with **Remove from favorites**. A list with fifty entries has stopped being a shortcut anyway.
Info

Full test picker available on web

What this means: A visit card worked on at the bedside on a phone has a simplified test picker.

What to do: Record what you can and fill in the rest in the browser — it is the same card of the same visit.
Error

Something went wrong. Please try again.

What this means: The full data of a test chosen from favorites could not be fetched. The test is added anyway, but without its description and without the **Scoring guide**.

What to do: Remove the test card and add it again from the search.

Who has access

Practitioner Clinic Admin

Every role with access to visits can browse the test catalog. A result can be recorded by whoever keeps the clinical documentation — Practitioner, Coordinator, Senior Physiotherapist, Trainee, Occupational Therapist, Speech and Language Therapist and Psychologist, as well as the Owner and the Administrator. A Technician and read-only clinical access cannot record a result.

The practice's shared favorites list is kept solely by the Owner and the Administrator; Heltio refuses other roles entry to Settings → Clinic favorites. Every recorded result leaves a trace in the audit log.

A recorded result inherits the fate of the note it was written in: once the visit card is signed you cannot change it directly — see signing and locking a note.

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