Service Support Costs

Health and social care research is a core NHS activity and as such, the NHS is committed to supporting a Portfolio of commercially and non-commercially funded research. The AcoRD guidance (Attributing the costs of health and social care Research and Development) provides a transparent and consistent basis for allocation of resources for studies.

Research studies comprise a number of component activities which, for the purpose of agreeing funding arrangements, are attributed to one of three broad costs categories:

• Research Costs - the costs of the R&D itself. This ends when the researchfinishes. They relate to activities that are being undertaken to answer the research questions.
• NHS Treatment Costs - the patient care costs, which would continue to be incurred if the patient care service in question was maintained after the R&D study had stopped.
• NHS Support Costs - the additional patient care costs associated with the research, which would end once the R&D study in question had stopped, even if the patient care involved was maintained.

If you are a researcher, you may also apply for service support costs to support practitioners who are recruiting to your study. For example to reimburse practice staff time to conduct database searches for eligible patients or when obtaining informed consent. We can help you with this process. Please contact us.

Further information can be found here.