PULSE, the GPs’ magazine, has done a great service for all NHS users by using the Freedom of Information Act to find out how ‘Personal Health Budgets’ were spent in England in 2014-15.
As far as NHS England is concerned Personal Health Budgets are a great success, and in its ‘Five Year Forward View’ it called for a major expansion of the scheme. Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England predict a spend of over £120m this year for 4,800 patients on the Personal Health Budgets scheme.
As most people know, the NHS is being hit by over £20bn plus of cuts, and entire hospitals, as well as large numbers of A&Es and Maternity and Paediatric units, have been shut down. Many more hospitals are being threatened by massive cuts and closures.
NHS workers have not had a real wage rise for five years, a situation that the government is set to continue. Staff have been bullied and abused by Health Secretary Hunt who recently accused NHS doctors of being responsible for thousands of patients’ deaths because of their refusal to carry out the kind of seven-day working in NHS hospitals that he wants to see imposed.
In fact, he threatened doctors that if they did not kow- tow they would have new contracts imposed by government diktat. The use of the Freedom of Information Act has shown that at the same time as the NHS is being bankrupted by government cuts, NHS England and a number of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) have been handing out goodies to the few, no doubt to try to create a base of support for the government’s drive to privatise the NHS.
A great deal of noise has been generated to claim that instead of free health care at the point of need patients should have a Personal Health Budget to purchase their own healthcare. Pulse managed to get full responses to its questions from just 33 CCGs out of 209.
It found that in Northamptonshire, £2.55m was spent on Personal Health Budgets for 161 patients, which included a sat-nav, new clothes, and the construction of a summer house so one patient could have ‘their own space’. In Cornwall, £267,000 was spent on five people, including £2,080 on aromatherapy, £248 on horse riding and £7 on hiring a pedalo.
In Stoke-on-Trent, £114,000 was spent between 115 patients, including money for a Wii Fit computer game and more than £1,000 on music lessons. The highest spend per patient was found in West Sussex, where £2.6m was divided among 44 people.
Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the BMA’s General Practitioners’ Committee, said: ‘While individuals may themselves value a massage or summer house, others will understandably start to question why they can’t also have such things paid for by the state – and that will just fuel demand.’
Nigel Praities, editor of Pulse, commented: ‘Doctors have to follow the evidence, they have to make sure everything they do is effective. To see in other areas of the NHS money maybe being spent on things that doesn’t have such evidence behind it, particularly at a time when the NHS is trying to save lots of money, is hard to swallow.’
In fact, Pulse has learnt that Personal Health Budgets are beginning to destabilise existing services, with one mental health service having to close its doors due to its funding being ploughed into the scheme.
NHS England is simply trying to keep sections of the middle classes sweet while it takes an axe to the NHS as a whole on behalf of the government. The bonus is that it allows propaganda to be made that everybody should be on a Personal Health Budget and responsible for purchasing their own healthcare.
A tiny group of people are being favoured in order to create a base of support for the government and to facilitate further attacks on the NHS. Personal Health Budgets must be scrapped, along with all of the attacks on the NHS. The TUC Congress is meeting in September. It must call a general strike to defend the NHS by bringing down the government and bringing in a workers government and socialism.
