Funding Care
Herts Valleys CCG is awarded a sum of money by the Government each year to pay for NHS services for people who are registered with doctors surgeries locally. Our role is to ensure we buy the best healthcare services for our patients, providing value for money whilst improving health and wellbeing.
In 2017/18 we had a total budget of around £840 million that we spent on community healthcare, hospital care, general practice and mental health services. We spent most on hospital care.
We jointly commission some of our services – such as mental health, NHS 111 and the GP out-of-hours service – with partners including Hertfordshire County Council and East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group.
Continuing Healthcare
NHS Continuing Healthcare is care arranged and funded by the NHS for people with on-going, complex healthcare needs. Care can be delivered in your own home, care homes, or non-acute hospitals. NHS Continuing Healthcare is free and is different to NHS Funded Nursing Care, which some people with less complex needs living in care homes receive.
People that may qualify for NHS Continuing Healthcare include those living with a complex medical condition who require a lot of care and support or those who need highly specialised nursing support. This includes people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities (including disabled older people), and mental health needs including dementia.
Personal Health Budgets
Personal health budgets are one way for people to obtain personalised, flexible care. They offer the opportunity for people to be actively involved in choosing and controlling the care that best meets their health needs and helps achieve the outcomes they feel are most important to them.
A personal health budget is an amount of money to support the identified healthcare and wellbeing needs of an individual, which is planned and agreed between the individual, or their representative, and the local clinical commissioning group (CCG). It isn’t new money, but a different way of spending health funding to meet the needs of an individual.
Personal health budgets have been shown to improve people’s health and wellbeing and to reduce the need to use other NHS services such as being admitted to hospital in an emergency. However whilst they can benefit some people they may not suit everyone and as a result they are completely voluntary. They are also not about saving money. Instead personal health budgets can help make better use of NHS money by spending it on things that will work best for the individual.