28th January 2009

Personal health budgets: first steps

Department of Health online publication on personalised health care

The Department of Health (DH) today released their publication Personal health budgets: first steps, online. This document is a critical achievement in addressing the challenges that people face as they work to increase personalisation of healthcare, although it by no means pretends to have all the answers.

The document has been formulated with input of individuals both within and outside the health and social care systems; setting out the key things organisations need to begin and build up energy and momentum around this important policy. The Personal Health Budgets Team are requesting expressions of interest in piloting from Local Authorities (LAs) and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), which are due by 27 March 2009. They are holding events in February and March to support PCT and LA project leads plan their expressions of interest. Please visit networks.csip.org.uk for more information.

To see a cover letter to LAs and PCTs from David Nicholson and for some background to Personal Health Budgets, please see the Department of Health webpage at: www.dh.gov.uk

Ian Dodge, Director of the DH’s Policy Support Unit stated that:

‘Finding a sustainable way to improve outcomes for people through personalisation will depend on a broad range of people working together. There is still much to do – not least the passage of the draft legislation to allow direct payments for health care and support for the pilots as they get underway – so please do keep in touch with the team to keep feeding into this work.’

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