A new evaluation report published today by the Nuffield Trust examines how personal health budgets will work in practice and the issues they raise for both commissioners and policy makers.
A personal health budget is an allocation of NHS money to someone with an identified health need so that they can buy the services they think will improve certain aspects of their health and wellbeing. It is intended to give the recipient more control over the care that they receive.
Following a Department of Health pilot programme launched in 2009, the Government has committed that from April 2014everyone who receives NHS continuing health care funding will have a right to request a personal health budget rather than receiving commissioned services.
This will include an extension of the programme to cover children with special educational needs and disabilities, who will be able to have an integrated budget across the NHS, social care and education. As of 2015, clinical commissioning groups are expected to be able to offer a personal health budget to anyone with a long-term condition who could benefit.
In its new report, the Nuffield Trust stress that the roll-out of personal health budgets will be a challenge for commissioners and policy-makers as they determine how personal health budgets will fit within the mainstream NHS landscape.
Issues for commissioners include -
- determining the appropriate value of a personal health budget;
- decommissioning existing services to fund personal health budgets;
- developing vibrant and diverse provider markets to support personal health budgets; and
- finding the money to pay for the necessary infrastructure.
For policy-makers, the areas of concern include -
- the scope of personal health budgets;
- the impact of personal health budgets on care quality;
- the longer-term financial sustainability of personal health budgets; and
- the risk of a postcode lottery emerging in access to personal health budgets.
The report concludes that although the personal health budget pilot programme provided clinical commissioning groups with many useful lessons, important questions remain; many of which can only be fully answered as the roll-out of personal health budgets proceeds.
Personal health budgets: Challenges for commissioners and policy-makers is available @ http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/sites/files/nuffield/publication/130828_...