Direct payment for health care: a consultation

This consultation document seeks views on the Government’s proposals for piloting direct payments for health care. This is part of the wider pilot programme to explore personal health budgets announced in High Quality Care For All. PCTs are already able to offer personal budgets that do not involve giving money directly to individuals. The Health Bill, which has now completed its main Parliamentary stages, would extend these options by providing power to allow direct payments, where the individual would be given the money to buy their own health care as agreed in a care-plan.

Published October 2009, 41 pages

Personalised Care Planning for People with Long Term Conditions

A new outline specification for personalised care planning is now available. It differs from other primary care service frameworks published by NHS PCC because personalised care planning is more about an approach to service delivery than the services themselves. The outline specification aims to help PCTs to develop their local thinking and approach, and work with providers to change existing ways of working, rather than commission additional services.

Published November 2009, 24 pages

Other documents and conferences

Information for commissioning end of life care released

Care Planning

Transforming community services: enabling new patterns of provision

Practice Based Commissioning & Patient & Public Involvement: The New Frontier

PBC offers an opportunity for GP practices, Primary Care Trusts and local people to work together developing more appropriate pathway-based care and more efficient services. The report 'Practice Based Commissioning & Patient & Public Involvement: The New Frontier' explores this area.

However despite a general feeling that users should be involved, views of local communities are rarely taken on board with PBC.

Surveys carried out by NHS Alliance and Developing Patient Pathways suggest that some practices a experiencing barriers to involving patients in the early phases of PBC, despite adequate mechanisms.

(Published July 2007, 26 pages)

Assessing young people for substance misuse

This NTA document has been developed for service managers and practitioners delivering specialist substance misuse services to young people under the age of 18. It describes a framework for specialist substance misuse assessment, how specialist substance misuse assessment dovetails with the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for children and young people (DfES, 2006a) and outlines the context of undertaking an assessment of young people and care planning arrangements.

(Published February 2007, 28 pages)