Item	Yes/no	Comment
I. Is the study population clearly described?	Yes	Clinical characteristics of participants and withdrawals stated and described explicitly.
2. Are competing alternatives clearly described?	No	Usual care, authors state community‐based care determined by local policy and practices, no further information on timing, duration or frequency
3. Is a well‐defined research question posed in answerable form?	Yes	Research question for economic evaluation stated: "Is SCC care under the new system of care cost‐effective compared with SCC care according to usual practice, from either a health and social care perspective or a societal perspective?"
4. Is the economic study design appropriate to the stated objective?	Yes	Cluster randomised trial, using cost‐effectiveness analysis and cost‐utility analysis.
5. Is the chosen time horizon appropriate to include relevant costs and consequences?	Yes	Evaluated cost‐effectiveness at 6 months (primary endpoint) though also explored outcomes at 12‐month time point, which would have allowed additional adequate time for all relevant costs and benefits to become apparent.
6. Is the actual perspective chosen appropriate?	Yes	2 perspectives taken for patients and carers: health and social care cost perspective and a societal perspective.
7. Are all important and relevant costs for each alternative identified?	Yes	Unit costs of residential and nursing home stay, inpatient services, outpatient services, value of carer time, SCC time and stroke multidisciplinary meeting, total health and social care costs.
8. Are all costs measured appropriately in physical units?	Yes	A Client Service Receipt Inventory specifically adapted for this study was used, based on versions used successfully in previous large stroke rehabilitation trials.
9. Are costs valued appropriately?	Yes	Opportunity costs considered in unit costs in the form of wage cost and leisure time cost.
10. Are all important and relevant outcomes for each alternative identified?	Yes	Economic evaluation was based on individual‐level data collected within the trial. It assessed cost‐effectiveness based on the GHQ‐12 and cost– utility based on quality‐adjusted life‐years (QALYs) derived from the EQ‐5D.
11. Are all outcomes measured appropriately?	Yes	GHQ‐12 and EQ‐5D validated measures.
12. Are outcomes valued appropriately?	Yes	Indirect utility assessment using the EQ‐5D, utility weights were taken from a UK population survey.
13. Is an incremental analysis of costs and outcomes of alternatives performed?	No	No suggested between‐group differences for cost and outcomes, ICERs not calculated.
14. Are all future costs and outcomes discounted appropriately?	Yes	Time horizon limited to 12 months, discounting only necessary if time horizon > 1 year.
15. Are all important variables, whose values are uncertain, appropriately subjected to sensitivity analysis?	Yes	Sensitivity analysis conducted imputing missing health and social care costs and QALYs at 6 months.
16. Do the conclusions follow from the data reported?	Yes	Authors reported no evidence of cost effectiveness in line with economic analysis results.
17. Does the study discuss the generalisability of the results to other settings and patient/client groups?	Yes	Authors stated good generalisability: "The range of disparate geographical regions ensured a good representation of different healthcare settings optimizing generalizability." Authors also discussed keeping eligibility criteria to a minimum, to ensure the stroke patient population was representative of usual referrals to SCCs including patients with language and cognitive impairments.
18. Does the article indicate that there is no potential conflict of interest of study researcher(s) and funder(s)?	Yes	Authors stated in 'Sources of Funding' that this is independent research.
19. Are ethical and distributional issues discussed appropriately?	No	Socioeconomic status of patients/carers not discussed in detail, education level and main employment before stroke reported for stroke participants.