Can severely disabled patients benefit from in-patient neurorehabilitation for acquired brain injury?

摘要

The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry publishes few papers on the systems and costs of health service provision. Those it does should have a clear clinical message for our multidisciplinary readership as is the case for the paper by Turner-Stokes et al (see pages 634-9) on the cost efficiency of neurorehabilitation.Commissioners of health services, given the task of getting value for money for their patients, want to know that the treatments offered are effective and that the cost matches the size of the effect; treatments should be cost effective. But commissioners of rehabilitation services and long term care may also ask, can it save us money in the long term? By investing in this treatment will the patient need less expensive care in the future?