**2.5 Future scope of occupational therapy**

In order to promote the motivation and engagement of the person, it seems useful to include an early assessment not only in neurological patients, but also in

**Figure 1.** *Personal environment occupation model.*

*Early Occupational Therapy Intervention: Patients' Occupational Needs DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102356*

#### **Figure 3.** *Expanding the area of the environment (E).*

patients with other diseases. For referral to the specific assessment of the occupational therapist, the complexity criterion could be used. According to the agency for healthcare research and quality (AHRQ ), the patient described as complex "is a person with two or more chronic diseases, in which each of the conditions present is able to influence the outcome of the care of the other coexisting conditions in various ways: limitation of life expectancy, increased morbidity, interactions between drug therapies, and the impossibility of full use of appropriate treatment

#### *Primary Health Care*

due to contraindications" [10]. The measurability of this criterion seems to us to be expressed by the rehabilitation complexity scale extended (RCS-E) [11].

Our experience described in Section 2.3 is extending the selection of patients on the basis of their RCS-E score, extending the sample under examination regardless of pathology.

Sharing the early assessment of occupational needs with the specialists in the care team can avoid a delay in the rehabilitation programme.
