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ISB 0070: Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs)

Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs) are standard groupings of clinically similar treatments which use comparable levels of healthcare resource. In their most basic form HRGs are groups of ICD-10 diagnoses and OPCS procedures that have similar resource implications.

About this information standard

The objective of using HRGs is to ensure that NHS organisations use a common standard to report activity. This is achieved by ensuring that all NHS organisations use the HRG Grouper issued by NHS Digital, or another grouper that can be shown to produce the same results.

HRGs are currently used as a means of determining fair and equitable reimbursement for care services delivered by providers. These consistent 'units of currency' support standardised healthcare commissioning across the service. In addition, HRGs offer organisations the ability to understand their own activity in terms of the types of patients they care for, and the treatments they undertake. In addition they allow external comparative and benchmarking activity to take place.


Current release

Release date 23/08/2008
Release number DSCN 17/2008
Release title Version 4.0
Stage Maintenance
Key documents  Data Set Change Notice
Supporting documents  Full Stage Submission
Further information 

NHS Digital National Casemix Office

Last edited: 24 October 2018 10:49 am