Personal health budgets: a mechanism to encourage service integration?
ISSN: 1476-9018
Article publication date: 30 March 2022
Issue publication date: 26 May 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Integrated care continues to be a central aim within health and social care policy in England. Personal budgets and personal health budgets aim to place service users at the centre of decision-making and are part of a wider long-term initiative working towards personalised and integrated care. Personal budgets began in social care with the national pilot programme of individual budgets, which aimed to incorporate several funding streams into one budget, but in practice local authorities limited these to social care expenditure. Personal budgets then moved into the health care sector with the introduction of a three-year personal health budgets pilot programme that started in 2009. The purpose of the paper is to explore the post-pilot implementation of personal health budgets and explore their role in facilitating service integration. We examine this through the RE-AIM framework.
Design/methodology/approach
During 2015 and 2016, eight organisational representatives, 23 personal health budget holders and three service providers were interviewed, 42 personal health budget support plans were collected and 14 service providers completed an online survey.
Findings
Overall, personal health budgets continued to be viewed positively but progress in implementation was slower than expected. Effective leadership, clear communication and longer-term implementation were seen as vital ingredients in ensuring personal health budgets are fully embedded and contribute to wider service integration.
Originality/value
The paper highlights the importance of policy implementation over the longer-term, while illustrating how the venture of personal health budgets in England could be a mechanism for implementing service integration. The findings can serve to guide future policy initiatives on person-centred care and service integration.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all those who took part in the current study, and those who helped with recruitment. The authors also thank Professor Jennifer Beecham at PSSRU, University of Kent for her comments on the draft manuscript, alongside Sarah Godfrey and Alan Dargan for their support. The paper is based on independent research commissioned and funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme in the Department of Health and Social Care. The views expressed in the publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, the Department of Health and Social Care or other bodies or government departments mentioned in the paper.
Funding: The study is funded by the Policy Research Programme at the Department of Health and Social Care and Variation-to-contract to the Policy Research Programme project “Evaluation of the personal health budgets pilots” (PRP 077/0014).
Citation
Welch, E., Jones, K., Fox, D. and Caiels, J. (2022), "Personal health budgets: a mechanism to encourage service integration?", Journal of Integrated Care, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 251-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/JICA-07-2021-0038
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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