BACKGROUND: Disease activity and disability should be assesssed at each rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patient visit to monitor response to therapy. Disease activity has been traditionally evaluated by the disease activity scale (DAS-28) and the ACR criteria, which depend on physicians, but few studies have analyzed short-term predictors of the patient self-reported RA disease activity index-RADAI. Disability is routinely assessed by the health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) whose long term predictors, but not short-term, have been extensively studied.  OBJECTIVES:   To analyze whether the 6-month baseline levels of HAQ and of RADAI and other factors predict change at 6-month intervals. METHODS: RA patients from the biannual NDB-Portugal cohort were used. For each patient, differences between two consecutive 6-month intervals were computed for HAQ (0-3, 3 is worse) and RADAI (0-10, 10 is worse). For each scale, a binary outcome was constructed based upon these differences, where a positive increment meant worsening in function and disease activity. Patients’ observations whose increments were null were excluded. Univariate (UV) and multivariate (MV) generalized estimating equations were used. Factors included age, sex, marital status, disease duration, education level, number of major comorbidities, paid work status and 6-month baseline HAQ and RADAI levels. RESULTS: MV analyses revealed that the main predictors of HAQ were baseline HAQ: (OR: 0.49, 95% CI 0.44, 0.54), number of comorbidities (1.09 (1.05, 1.14)), and age (1.02 (1.01, 1.02)); For RADAI they were, baseline RADAI (0.69 (0.66, 0.73)), comborbidities (1.11 (1.07, 1.16)), and educational level (0.95 (0.93, 0.97)).   CONCLUSIONS: Worse baseline levels of HAQ and RADAI predicted their respective improvement 6-months later. This could be due to optimization of treatment strategies when worse baseline scores are detected, but whatever the reason, performing these two patient reported outcomes are a quick and non-rheumatologist dependent way to improve patients’ disease status over 6-month intervals.