Financial risk in health purchasing: risk pools

The point of minimum financial risk is reached by placing between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of the inpatient budget into the risk pool. Allocating only five per cent of the budget to a risk pool requires a population base equivalent to the whole of England to achieve a one per cent tolerance on the risk pool. Moving 35 per cent of the practice based commissioning [PBC] inpatient budget into a primary care trust [PCT] held budget leads to between three per cent and eight per cent risk associated with the PCT retained budget for the largest and smallest PCTs in England respectively, i.e. only risk pools consisting of groups of PCTs are sufficiently large to mitigate financial risk.

British Journal of Health Care Management 2008; 14 (6): 240-245

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