Milestone for NHS rehabilitation centre plans

The 70-bed hub will use expertise from across the country

A pioneering £100m rehabilitation facility has moved a step closer with the appointment of a main contractor.

The National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) will be a 70-bed hub for treatment and research.

NHS officials said it would be "game-changing" for those recovering from serious injury or illness.

It will be built by Integrated Health Projects (IHP) beside the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC), near Rempstone in Nottinghamshire.

The civilian centre will take lessons from the nearby military facility

Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust is overseeing the project and has appointed IHP, a partnership between Vinci Construction UK and Sir Robert McAlpine.

A spokesman said: "The NRC is a unique and brand-new facility with the potential to transform clinical rehabilitation across the NHS in England and Wales.

"Thanks to a wide National Clinical Academic Partnership of 22 Higher Education Institutions with the University of Nottingham and Loughborough University as the leads, the NRC will combine under one roof clinical rehabilitation, research, development and commercial innovation, and training and education.

"The impact of the NRC for patients is anticipated to be game-changing in terms of the quality of life potentially achievable after serious injury or illness."

Analysis

By Rob Sissons, BBC East Midlands health correspondent

Think of rehabilitation and you may imagine physiotherapy leaflets and exercises, but after injury or illness people may need much more than that to achieve the optimum recovery they can.

That could include psychological support input to improve cognitive function as well as all the other physical aspects of health.

Think of the the NHS National Rehabilitation Centre as the start of something that could be very big for the NHS - a new model of care designed to optimise results for patients and get more people back to work.

The facility will be 400m from the defence medical rehabilitation centre where military personnel benefit from expert support.

The NHS will share some of the defence centre's facilities and expertise.

It is widely acknowledged the armed forces are much better at getting people back to improved health and returned to work than the NHS. The idea of this new venture is to close that gap.

Evaluating the rehab will be the universities of of Loughborough and Nottingham.

Expect huge interest in the work of this new facility. It could become the blueprint for pioneering rehab in the NHS and be rolled out across the country.

The centre will work closely with the East Midlands major trauma unit set up at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham ten years ago.

Long term expansion of this new concept would of course cost many millions but there are big amounts of money to be saved by getting more people back to work after injury, some of whom depend on benefits to survive.

The facility is for patients from across the East Midlands and a small number of patients from across the UK may be able to also use it.

The centre is now very close, with building work due to start in the new year and the commencement of a new chapter for the NHS.

The NRC will be built on a site close to the counterpart defence facility - the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) Stanford Hall - which is operated by the Ministry of Defence and opened in 2018.

Site preparation can now begin and main construction should start early next year subject to final agreements from government.

If this goes ahead, the first NHS patients should be treated towards the end of 2024.