Personal Budgets

Public health concerns mount as 'personal health budgets' imposed on 10,000 chronically ill patients

Patients across the country are to have their health funding rolled into their social care funding and be expected to manage both themselves. Is this empowerment, or something more sinister, health experts wonder?

By Caroline Molloy

Published: March 13, 2015, 10:03 am

Thousands of patients across England will from 1 April be expected to individually manage the funds allocated for their healthcare, which have been merged into their social care ‘entitlements’, the NHS announced this week..

In Barnsley, Cheshire, Tower Hamlets, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Stockton and the South West of England, 10,000 patients with complex needs will be a single ‘pot’ of money from which they will be expected to purchase both their health and their social care needs.

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