We have tried to make this genuinely useful rather than a sales page. The numbers are cited. The prices are real. Where the evidence is uncertain, we say so.
What happens locally after a stroke in Orpington
Orpington is in the London Borough of Bromley, so a stroke here goes to the Princess Royal University Hospital in Farnborough, which runs one of London's eight hyper-acute stroke units on Level 0 of the North Wing. After the hyper-acute phase you move to Medical Ward 5, the step-down stroke unit at the same hospital.
Orpington Hospital does not take stroke emergencies. It has no emergency department for stroke, so an ambulance will take you to the Princess Royal, not to your nearest hospital building.
What Orpington Hospital does have is King's specialist inpatient neuro-rehabilitation — the Frank Cooksey Rehabilitation Unit (15 beds) and Ontario Ward (14 beds). These treat stroke alongside acquired brain injury, spinal cord injury and neuromuscular disease. They are worth knowing about, but they are complexity-based specialist services drawing from a regional population, not a routine destination. Most stroke patients will not go there.
Then you go home — and this is where the picture changes.
Community stroke rehabilitation in Bromley is provided by the Bromley Stroke Rehabilitation Team: physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, a clinical nurse specialist, a clinical psychologist and rehabilitation support workers, delivered in your own home. You can refer yourself, or your GP or consultant can.
Two things surprise people. The team is provided by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and based at University Hospital Lewisham, even though your hospital care was entirely King's. And it runs Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm — no weekend or evening service.
⚠️ One local point of confusion worth clearing up: Bromley Healthcare runs a separate neuro-rehabilitation service that explicitly excludes stroke. If you have found a Bromley neuro-rehab service advertising a short waiting time, it is not for stroke survivors. Stroke goes to the Bromley Stroke Rehabilitation Team.
Where the NHS pathway stops
Nothing above is a criticism of the people delivering it. The constraint is how much therapy is commissioned, not how hard anyone is working.
Here is the gap, in numbers.
National guidance — NICE guideline NG236, updated in October 2023 — recommends at least three hours of therapy a day, on at least five days a week after a stroke. That is the standard the NHS is measured against.
An analysis of 94,905 stroke patients in the UK national stroke audit found that the average therapy actually delivered ranged from two minutes of psychology to fourteen minutes of physiotherapy per day of hospital stay. That figure is averaged across every day of an admission, including days when no therapy happened — so on the days therapy ran, people got more. It is still a long way from three hours.
And in the community, nobody is really measuring. When the national audit added new measures in 2024 to check therapy against the NICE dose, every one of them applied to hospital inpatients only. The single community measure records whether you were seen by a stroke team — not how much therapy you actually got.
What we do differently
We deliver intensive rehabilitation in your home in Orpington, at a dose closer to what the guideline describes. Up to ten sessions a week if that is what your goals need.
The reason dose matters is not that more hours are automatically better — the evidence is more careful than that, and we would rather tell you so. A Cochrane review in 2021 covering 21 trials and 1,412 people found more time in the same rehabilitation produced only a small gain in limb movement and no significant difference in everyday activities. A randomised trial in 2016 gave people up to 9,600 arm repetitions and found no dose-response effect at all.
What the evidence does support is purposeful, task-specific, high-repetition practice, aimed at the things you actually want to do again. And there the numbers are stark: researchers who sat in on 312 therapy sessions counted an average of 32 arm repetitions per session, while feasibility studies show around 300 in a single hour is achievable when a session is designed for it.
That is the difference we are selling. Not more hours of anything — more purposeful practice per hour, in the room where the movement actually matters.
We measure it, and we show you
Every programme is scored on standard, published measures — the same ones your hospital team used. Depending on your goals, that means the Fugl-Meyer Assessment for arm and leg movement, the Action Research Arm Test for hand function, the Berg Balance Scale, ten-metre walk speed, and the UK FIM+FAM for functional independence.
You get the scores. In writing. Including the ones that have not moved.
What it costs
Published, because you should not have to ask.
| Programme | Sessions | Price per session |
|---|---|---|
| Guided Recovery | 1 a week | £150 |
| Intensive Recovery | 3 a week | £110 |
| Immersion Recovery | up to 10 a week | £100 |
A booster pack of two extra sessions a week is £400.
Every programme begins with a 60–90 minute assessment in your home covering a full clinical assessment, a written rehabilitation plan and a programme recommendation — plus an independent management programme you keep whatever you decide next. We ask you to have a family member, carer or advocate there if at all possible, because rehabilitation rarely works when only the patient understands the plan.
If a programme would put you under real financial strain, we will tell you and recommend a lower-intensity option. That is a promise, not a marketing line.
Common questions
Can I have this alongside my NHS therapy?
Yes, and most people do. We are not a replacement for the Bromley Stroke Rehabilitation Team — we work around it. Tell your NHS team what you are doing so everyone is pulling the same direction.
Is it too late? My stroke was months ago.
Not necessarily. An NHS programme at Queen Square in London ran 90 hours of intensive upper-limb therapy over three weeks with 224 patients who were a median of 18 months past their stroke, and saw a median nine-point gain on the Fugl-Meyer scale that held at six months. That was an uncontrolled study with no control group — the authors say so themselves — so treat it as encouraging rather than proof. But "too late" is said far more often than the evidence supports.
Do you guarantee I will get better?
No. Nobody honest does. Recovery varies between people and always will. We will tell you what we think is realistic after the assessment, and we will show you the measurements either way.
Which areas do you cover?
Orpington, Chislehurst, Petts Wood, Bromley town, Sidcup, Beckenham and the surrounding area.
Who you would actually be working with
Your assessment and your programme are led by Tino Mutasa, a neurological physiotherapist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. Not a coordinator, not a call centre, and not an unnamed "clinical team" — the person who assesses you is the person responsible for your plan.
HCPC registration PH134357 · 07950 445853If you are in Orpington and want to talk it through, book a home assessment. You will get an honest opinion about whether intensive rehabilitation is likely to help in your situation, and a written plan you keep either way.
This page is general information and not a substitute for assessment by your GP, stroke team or physiotherapist. Every recovery is different.