Background to UK ROC

Organisation of specialist rehabilitation in England

In England, the majority of patients with mild-moderate acquired brain injuries receive rehabilitation within their local non-specialist Level 3 services. 

• Those with more complex rehabilitation (Category B) needs, beyond the scope of their local services are referred to Level 2 specialist rehabilitation services, providing for district-based populations of up to 1 million. 

• Those with highly complex (Category A) needs are managed in Level 1 (tertiary) services providing for regionally-based populations of 2-5 million or more. 

The criteria for admission to Level 1 and 2 services are set out in the NHS England service specification.

The UK Rehabilitation Outcomes Collaborative (UK ROC) 

UK ROC provides the national clinical registry for specialist rehabilitation in England.

The UK ROC database was established in 2009 through a 7-year Applied Research programme grant (RP-PG-0407-10185) funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research.   Further information about this project can be found here.

The aim of the programme was to gather prospective national data on outcomes, costs and cost-efficiency.  The results of the project can be found in the final report which was produced in 2015:  Final NIHR Programme Grant Report (2015) - Appendices - Executive Summary

Since 2015, UK ROC has been commissioned directly by NHS England to provide the national commissioning dataset for specialist rehabilitation. It systematically collates patent-level data for each patient admitted to a Level 1 or 2 rehabilitation unit in England recording:

1. Each individual’s needs for rehabilitation

2. The rehabilitation inputs provided to meet those needs

3. The outcomes that result in terms of functional gain 

UK ROC team provides regular service level reporting on quality and benchmarking,   further details of which can be found in our recent 6 year report.

It provides costing information on casemix and treatment costs which is updated annually to inform the development and updating of complexity-weighted tariffs.

It also provides information the only accurate costing data on specialist inpatient rehabilitation to inform NHS England’s published prices.

Further information relating to our work relating to commissioning and a link to the NHS England published prices can be found on our dedicated page on commissioning.

Publications from UKROC have demonstrated the cost efficiency of rehabilitation across a wide range of conditions confirming that inpatient rehabilitation not only provides value for money. but is one of the most cost-effective interventions in healthcare.  A list of publications can be found here.

An overview of our activities can be found in the document Brief Introduction to UK ROC (April 2023).