We Care Hospice

Functional Assessment Staging (FAST) 

       1. No difficulty either subjectively or objectively

       2. Complains of forgetting location of objects.  Subjective work difficulties

       3. Decreased job functioning evident to co-workers.  difficulty in traveling to new locations.  Decreased organizational capacity.*

       4. Decreased ability to perform complex tasks, e.g., plannning dinner for guests, handling personal finances (such as forgetting to pay bills), difficulty marketing, etc.

       5. Requires assistance in choosing proper clothing to wear for the day, season or occasion, e.g. patient may wear the same clothing repeatedly, unless supervised.

       6. A) Improperly putting on clothes without assistance or cueing (e.g., may put street clothes over night clothes, or put        shoes on wrong feet, or have difficulty buttoning clothing) occasionally or more frequently over the past weeks.

           B) Unable to bathe properly (e.g., difficulty adjusting bath-water temperature) occasionally or more frequently over the past weeks.*

           C) Inability to handle mechanics of toileting (e.g., forget to flush toilet, does not wipe properly or dispose of toilet tissue)occasionally or more frequently over the past weels.*

.        D) Urinary incontinence (occasionally or more frequently over the past weeks).*

            E) Fecal incontinence (occasionally or more frequently over the past weeks).*

       7. A) Ability to speak is limited to approximently a half a dozen intelligible words or fewer in the course of an average day or in the course of an intensive interview.

           B) Speech ability is limited to the use of a single intelligible word in an average day or in the course of an intensive interview (the person may repeat the word over and over).

           C) Ambulatory ability is lost (cannot walk without personal assistance).

           D) Cannot sit up without assistance (e.g., the individual will fall over if there are not lateral rests [arms] on the chair).

           E) Loss of the ability to smile.

           F) Loss of the ability to hold up head independently.

       *Scored primarily on the basis of information obtained from a knowledgeable informant and  / or category