The modelEleven components. One pathway.
Why it is publishedSo the standard can be held to.Open to patients, clinicians, and partners
The Anatomy of Recovery Care
The care the best-resourced systems specify, for everyone else.
The right question deserves an answer before the next appointment. The Anatomy of Recovery Care describes the clinical components that make recovery visible, coordinated, and responsive over time.
The organizing idea
Recovery is a sequence of decisions.
A useful standard connects what the patient reports, what the clinician sees, what changes over time, and what should happen next.
Collect meaningful change over time
Understand the pattern
Choose the next step
Keep care moving across providers
A standard is not a checklist on a shelf. It is a promise about how care will be delivered.
It should be specific enough to guide decisions, flexible enough for individual patients, and measurable enough to improve.
The recovery model
Eleven components. One connected recovery pathway.
The Anatomy of Recovery Care brings together the recurring elements found across well-resourced injury systems and translates them into a practical outpatient model.
1. Whole-person first assessment
Understand symptoms, function, psychology, daily life, and the care already in place.
2. Standardized measures
Use named clinical instruments where they add more clarity than impression alone.
3. Scheduled follow-up
Follow recovery on a calendar instead of waiting for the patient to find the next doorway.
4. Graduated return
Advance activity in stages, with clear clinical criteria for the next step.
5. Action thresholds
Define when a change calls for review, outreach, referral, or a different level of care.
6. Care coordination
Give someone responsibility for helping the patient and providers connect the next step.
7. Safety net
Identify urgent warning signs before the routine recovery pathway continues.
8. Individual baseline
Compare the patient with their reported pre-injury function and their own recovery over time.
9. Psychological health
Include mood, anxiety, stress, and related concerns within the injury-recovery pathway.
10. Purposeful testing
Use tests when they can inform care, rather than treating more testing as better care.
11. Accountable return
Make the final return to full activity a considered clinical decision, not an assumption.
Why publish it
Patients should be able to see what good recovery care includes.
The published framework shows how the pieces fit together. Clinicians can use it. Partners can understand it. Patients can see what the service is built to deliver.
The standard turns an idea into a working care model.
Readable by patients, clinicians, and partners.
Usable in everyday outpatient recovery.
Measurable through actual delivery.
Built to improve as practice and clinical knowledge evolve.
How InjuryDox uses it
The standard is the design brief behind the experience.
The patient sees a simple reporting mechanism. Underneath it are workflows for assessment, review, response, telehealth, and coordination.
Simple for the patient
Brief check-ins ask for the information the medical team needs to follow recovery.
Useful for the medical team
Reports are understood as part of a pattern, not treated as isolated scores.
Measurable in practice
InjuryDox tracks whether the promised assessments, reviews, responses, and handoffs occurred.
Read the standard. Then see the patient experience.
The Anatomy of Recovery Care describes what the service is built to deliver.