Some NHS personal health budgets are spent on holidays and hobbies

NHS personal health budgets have been used to buy things such as holidays, horse riding lessons, and video game consoles, a freedom of information request has found.

The details were published by the general practitioners’ magazine Pulse after a request to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England.1 Other examples of services purchased to date included art classes, music lessons, massages, and a summer house.

Personal health budgets were first piloted in the NHS in 20092 and were subsequently rolled out across England in 2014 to offer patients …