Outer North East London - London SHA

Key focus/scope

The NHS Outer North East London pilot site comprises 2 NHS areas including Barking and Dagenham PCT and Havering PCT. The overall pilot is focusing on people with long-term conditions, including Diabetes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Stroke (Havering only). NHS Outer North East London recognizes that many people have one or more conditions and multiple experiences such as learning disabilities or mental health challenges. Consequently NHS Outer North East London has actively included people with multiple conditions and co-morbidities.

Overview of pilot and its purpose

The pilot is commissioner-led within Outer North East London and as part of the national pilot programme, Outer North East London are looking at how personal health budgets can enable people to have more choice and control over their healthcare. Another key objective is to explore how having a personal health budget can work in line with the prevention agenda, with regards to:

• Unnecessary admission to hospital
• Reduction in duplication of services
• Prevention of avoidable health deterioration
• Prevention of health inequalities

NHS Outer North East London is working very closely with its respective local authorities including the London borough of Havering and the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. NHS Outer North East London is facilitating the development of robust systems, which enables smooth assessments, efficient payment processes and overall delivery of personal health budgets.

Objectives of pilot

Aims of the pilot include:

• Peoples' experiences of having a personal health budget. This will also be in comparison to people who do not have a personal health budget
• The impact of personal health budgets on commissioners
• The impact of personal health budgets on providers and the development of a market, both locally and centrally, for personal health budgets and tailored services
• How NHS Trusts can be non-prescriptive in offering personalised services to patients whilst balancing clinical duty to safeguard and protect the public
• The impact of people and carers receiving a personal health budget on the use of health and social care services
• The impact of healthcare direct payments for those eligible for continuing healthcare funding
• The right systems and processes that are required to provide personal health budgets
• The impact of personal health budgets on health inequalities in NHS Outer North East London.
• The cost implications that arise from implementation and freeing up funds for budget delivery

Evaluation Update

All targets of the recruitment process have been successfully delivered. NHS Outer North East London has seen better outcomes of patients' health and wellbeing by offering patients a personalised budget such as a personal health budget. There has been a divided split of services and products that have been requested by patients of NHS Outer North East London. Some being traditional services/products and some been non-traditional.

NHS Outer North East London have explored all three different ways of paying a personal health budget, third party, notional budget and a direct payment and have found positives from all methods of payment depending on individual patients and their long-term conditions.

By completing a newly designed patient questionnaire, NHS Outer North East London has seen a high percentage of positive remarks about the delivery of personal health budgets.

NHS Outer North East London

This information has been provided by NHS Outer North East London.