NHS Oldham - North West SHA

Key focus/scope

The pilot is a partnership between NHS Oldham, Oldham Local Authority and Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. It seeks to trial personal health budgets with an initial cohort of six people aged over 65 with dementia, and in receipt of continuing health care funding. These numbers are relative to both the general population and the population with continuing health care needs.

Overview of pilot and its purpose

Personal budgets are well established in Oldham and have been shown to improve satisfaction with services and quality of life. The pilot aims to build on the success of the personal budget programme in Oldham, and introduce it into health.

It is anticipated that personal health budgets will allow people greater control over the services they are able to access, and offer alternatives to traditional services. By thinking creatively, bespoke packages of short break care will enable patients to remain in the community for longer and reduce the frequency and length of hospital admissions.

The pilot will highlight efficiencies and inefficiencies with the existing service provision and develop a new model to deliver improved quality outcomes for people, in relation to quality of life and clinical wellbeing.

Objectives of pilot

The pilot aims to:

• develop a system and support framework through which people accessing services can be offered a personal health budget
• learn from personalisation work streams in social care and align the personal health budget process as closely as possible to the approach adopted in social care
• promote choice, flexibility and control for people and their carers
• evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot and adapt the processes in order to improve the patient experience and effectiveness of personal health budgets
• developing support plans and reviews that will help to deliver the individual's aspirations and goals.

This information has been provided by NHS Oldham.