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Personal Health Budgets - Good or Bad?


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Many parts of the country are trialling something called Personal Health Budgets... in brief, it is the NHS paying for people to get the treatment privately. I am not sure if this came from Labour or is another of the conversation plans to bring in more privatisation across the NHS.

My understanding is that the use of the money must be approved by the NHS, to ensure it is spent on suitable treatment, but my concern is that this is a short term fix, but will create further long term problems and will further add to a failure for the NHS to take improving the quality of treatment for OCD seriously, and also who is there to regulate private practitioners so that the NHS money is being spent wisely.

If we can work with the NHS to improve the quality of treatment on the NHS then there would be no need for Personal Health Budgets when it comes to OCD.

That's my thoughts, for those that have been involved in any of the trials what are your thoughts?

This is the blurb from my local NHS site.

Many people have said that having more control over how money gets spent on their care makes them feel more involved and positive about their treatment. Personal Budgets are already working successfully in social care and we are going to try a similar idea for health care. It does not cost any more than providing services in the normal way.

If you have a personal health budget, you will be able to use it for a range of things to help you meet your health and wellbeing needs.

You will not be expected to use your budget to pay for emergency care and care that you normally get from a GP. Personal health budgets will not be the answer for everyone but we do think they could be a good way to help some people to get the NHS care that is right for them.

From 2009 until 2012, we will be running a “pilot” for personal health budgets. This means testing the idea with a small number of people in eastern and coastal Kent to see if and how it works. Experts will look at what happens and help us decide what to do next.

The main things to know about personal health budgets

  • The NHS stands by its promise that it is there for everyone, based on need not ability to pay.
  • The NHS care and support you get should be safe and effective. It should be a positive experience.
  • Personal health budgets should help people who may not always get the best out of the NHS to get a better service, not make things worse.
  • You will not have to get healthcare in this way if you do not want to.
  • You should have as much control over decisions as is appropriate for you.
  • NHS and social care organisations should work in partnership with you and with each other.

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Are you sure that you can only select from private sector? My opinion is that our best CBT Therapists are those working within the NHS. Is there not the choice to use your personal budget to select NHS practitioners?

I agree, the best therapists we have for OCD are NHS based, well except Dr Perry who works privately, and currently Paul is not working with patients either. The lady that was with me at my group last night is now on the second of eight sessions with a private therapist locally to her funded by this scheme. There have also employed 'brokers' to advise patients how best to spend their personal health budget. I am not sure how impartial these brokers are though, if they are aligned to private health providers then there are huge question marks over this, and potentially people could be 'encouraged' to spend money at a place which is perhaps not the best place for their treatment.

I think you can still opt to use the budget for NHS treatment, but I believe that should be compulsory to keep the money within the NHS. If the scheme allowed for patients to spend their personal health budget within the NHS only, then this would be fantastic because people could pay to go to places like CADAT.

If this pushes more money away from the NHS into the private sector then we could end up losing good NHS skills to the private sector which could be difficult to replace.

So I guess our job to improve the quality of OCD treatment across the NHS is even more important now before it is too late.

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I think the principle is sound - a budget to allow users of service increased control and choice. However, I think this needs to be regulated and applied carefully.

Yep, got to agree with this, that it needs to be regulated, and the brokers must me NHS employed and independent from any outside concerns. From an OCD perspective we have to work harder to educate people not to assume a private therapist will be any better than a NHS one, and work harder to improve quality NHS treatment so that people will want to remain within the NHS for treatment.

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