Defining criteria for Centres of Clinical Excellence in Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery

This working group comprises 17 people from 10 countries, and we have consulted with consumer groups from 4 countries. We identified 7 key criteria, described and ranked in order of importance. These were that Centres of Clinical Excellence:

1. Deliver outstanding rehabilitation to ensure optimal outcome

2. Have a strongly developed research culture

3. Ensure interprofessional working and person-centred rehabilitation

4. Exchange new knowledge and promote mentorship to advance best practice

5. Have a shared ethical and value-based leadership

6. Provide continuous high-quality education

7. Advocate and promote equitable access and optimal delivery of stroke rehabilitation services and funding for innovative research

Elizabeth Lynch (Australia)
CoE group co-lead

We have presented these criteria at national and international conferences in 2021.

The next steps are to operationalize these criteria, to allow assessment of performance of clinical centres and to allow identification of areas for improvement within clinical centres. The process needs to be easy to apply, be universally applicable and transparent. 

Rachel Stockley (UK) and Liz Lynch (Australia) are coordinating this next piece of work, with mentoring and support from Marion Walker. We anticipate the process for assessing performance of clinical centres against the 7 criteria will be finalized in November 2022, ready for pilot testing in 2023.