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This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Interdisciplinary Health Team Care Conference, which took place September 26-28, 1991 in Baltimore, Maryland.  It is reproduced here with the permission of the author.

A main purpose of using interdisciplinary teams to deliver health care is ensuring a comprehensiveness and integration of patient assessment and care. Measurement or assessment instruments are a mechanism to assist this process--but only if certain criteria are met. Patient measurement can be viewed as a link between team function and patient (quality of life/function) and cost outcomes. Well-designed measurements for patient assessment and care which are used and accepted by team members can serve as tools that assist the team in solving patient problems. In turn, if the instruments for patient measurement meet certain requirements, the results can be used to measure team outcomes, as part of quality assurance or research studies.