2014 Conference Presentation
Abstract
Overview of the session Personal health budgets are a key aspect of the personalisation agenda across health care services in England. The aim is to place people at the heart of all decisions about their care and the services they receive to help meet their desired outcomes. The personal health budget pilot programme was launched by the Department of Health in 2009, and a three-year independent evaluation ran alongside. Twenty primary care trusts (PCTs) out of 70 pilot sites participated in the in-depth evaluation, with the remainder forming the wider cohort.
Based on the plans submitted by pilot sites, the 20 in-depth PCTs offered personal health budgets to individuals with the following health characteristics: long-term conditions (including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and long-term neurological conditions); mental health problems; receiving NHS Continuing Healthcare; and stroke. The evaluation used a controlled trial with a pragmatic design to compare the experiences of people selected to receive personal health budgets with the experiences of people continuing under the current support arrangements for their condition. Just over 1,000 individuals were recruited into the personal health budget group and 1,000 into the control group in order to ensure sufficient statistical power. The overall aim of the evaluation was to identify whether personal health budgets ensured better health and care outcomes when compared to conventional service delivery and, if so, the best way for personal health budgets to be implemented.
Following the evaluation, individuals eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare have the right to ask for a personal health budget from April 2014. From October 2014, individuals eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare have the right to have a personal health budget. The aim is to extend the availability of personal health budgets by 2015 to other individuals with a long-term health condition. “This is an independent report commissioned and funded by the Policy and Strategy Directorate in the Department of Health. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Department”. This session includes four presentations exploring how the findings from the evaluation are informing the current roll-out of personal health budgets.