Personal budgets announced for 2014

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has announced that personal budgets will be offered to patients receiving continuing healthcare by April 2014. The scheme will allow 50,000 patients to choose and direct their care by buying treatments from a private insurer.

A pilot is running until October, with 1,300 patients to inform this wider roll-out, and the results from this will be considered by the Department of Health. The aim of the personal budgets is to improve the patient experience.

Lansley told the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester yesterday: “Budgets that will give them more control over how their needs are met, allowing them to choose support and services that suit them and their families. Truly, putting patients at the heart of care.”

He added: “This is a solution which must come as part of a cultural shift for doctors, healthcare professionals, providers and patients which sees the patient as an equal partner in decisions about their care. It will personalise the NHS and provide more integrated high quality care across health and social care.”

Commenting on the announcement, NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar said: “Work on personal budgets by the NHS Confederation's Mental Health Network shows clinicians, patients and NHS leaders support the principle of more personalised services.”

Farrar also warned that it was a big change and certain barriers must be overcome. He said: “We need to address the fears of clinicians that it may be unethical to allow people to choose treatments and services with no evidence base yet these are exactly the things many patients want.”

Twenty pilot sites for personal health budgets are being evaluated in depth, with the final evaluation report due in October 2012, the Department of Health said.