University of Warwick
Improving prescription and delivery of resistance exercise training for older people with sarcopenia or physical frailty: results from Wave two of the Benchmarking Exercise Programme for Older People (BEPOP) quality improvement initiative
By Samantha Hartley, Alexandria Cropp, Charlotte Buckland and 7 others.
Abstract
Objectives
Resistance exercise training is often not prescribed or delivered effectively for sarcopenia or frailty. BEPOP aims to improve the effectiveness of resistance exercise training for people referred to community-based UK National Health Service (NHS) physiotherapy Methods: Anonymous data collection for 20 consecutive patients by each participating physiotherapy service. Wave two data collection (2024-25) was compared with Wave one data (2021-22) against five key quality recommendations. Aggregate and service-specific data on performance against the recommendations were fed back to each participating site.
Results
Twenty-eight services submitted Wave two data for 542 patients, mean age 82 (range 60-104) years. Two hundred and seventy nine (52%) participants had initial objective strength-based assessments; sarcopenia was diagnosed in 316 (58%) participants, 496 (92%) undertook resistance exercise training but only 222 (41%) had exercise intensity progressed, 205 (38%) were reassessed using the same objective strength-based assessment as baseline and 238 (44%) were signposted or referred to follow-on exercise services. For services participating in both Waves, performance for objective strength assessment improved (64% vs 52%), as did intensity progression (33% vs 11%) and onward referral (40% vs 31%).