Does a service provide safe, effective rehabilitation? An evaluation method for providers and purchasers.

Background: Independent organisations monitor the safety and governance of clinical services but do not assess specialist expertise. Peer review can assess service capability but is resource-intense and infeasible.

The problem: How can you ensure a service provides safe, effective rehabilitation? You ask them to provide data as evidence that they can be trusted to do so. This article suggests a structured approach to providing data on entrustability.

An analogy: How is the specialist skill of a doctor in training established? They provide evidence about high-level outcomes (capabilities in practice) related to their speciality. An educational supervisor assesses whether they can be trusted to perform safely and effectively without supervision. The capabilities in practice define their expertise.

The solution: A service can use seven high-level rehabilitation service capabilities, based on the clinical capabilities associated with medical training, with observable indicative descriptors, to collect evidence of their rehabilitation approach. A service must also select four to eight high-level competencies indicating they can rehabilitate their patient caseload safely and effectively. These competencies also need indicative descriptors as evidence of their performance in the service; 11 examples are given.

Capabilities.: The seven rehabilitation capabilities are: using the biopsychosocial model, having a multi-professional team, making a person-centred rehabilitation plan, working collaboratively across all boundaries, tailoring treatments to the patient's needs, ensuring staff have specific competencies required for their caseload, and acknowledging and managing uncertainty and complexity.

Conclusion.: Service providers could use this structured approach to develop and provide users with evidence of their rehabilitation expertise.