Balancing act

A DH discussion paper on personal health budgets sets the scene for the programme, which will be rolled out from April 2014. Reflecting on the experience of the Netherlands, an article in the BMJ offers some wisdom based on having learned the hard way. At a recent conference, deputy head of NHS Commissioning Andrew Sanderson proffered the warning that personal health budgets did not provide "an open ended system of entitlement" and that there would need to be a robust way of managing demand. There's also a paper from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services that looks at the position of young carers in the era of personalisation.

It's going to get personal

The government has announced that it will implement personal health budgets for people receiving continuing care by April 2014. While the small print states that this is subject to evaluations of the current pilot programmes, these are due to report in October 2012, so this announcement looks slightly like jumping the gun. The NHS Confederation, which has been considering the matter for some time, has issued a paper summarising the results of its research.