BMJ  2008;336:807-809 (12 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39524.400498.AD

Analysis

Let patients control the purse strings

¹ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services, Humphrey Building, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201, USA

Patient choice is much talked about in the NHS and other health systems but action has been limited. Vidhya Alakeson argues that piloting individual healthcare budgets would signal real commitment to creating patient centred care

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

As the burden of disease shifts from acute to chronic care, governments are having to reshape health services. The UK health white paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, published in January 2006, outlines four goals: greater prevention and early intervention, more choice and a louder voice for patients, more support for people with long term needs, and tackling inequalities. Other countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development have stated similar objectives. If governments are serious about these aims, they would do well to learn from recent innovation in social care. In the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, and Germany, the delivery of social care services is being transformed through the introduction of individualised funding mechanisms, such as direct payments and individual budgets. These mechanisms allow services to be more accurately tailored to individual needs and could particularly benefit patients needing long term health care.

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