NHS Bolton CCG Personal Health Budget Support Services

NHS Bolton CCG is seeking providers to apply to join a Quality Assurance Framework for Personal Health Budget Support Services.

Personal health budgets are an amount of money to support a patient's identified health and wellbeing needs, planned and agreed between the patient and their local NHS team. A personal health budget is not new money, but rather enables people to use existing funding differently.

Personal health budgets have been available for patients who are eligible or Continuing Healthcare funding in Bolton since April 2014. Personal Health Budgets are not mandatory.

NHS Bolton CCG wishes to support the continued growth of Personal Health Budgets to ensure that patients have greater choice, flexibility and control over the health care and support they receive. Support brokerage is seen as a key component in successfully achieving these aims.

Bolton CCG wishes to ensure that individuals can take up a Personal Health Budget in one of the following ways

Self-managed direct payment

Managed direct payment

Third Party PHB

Notional PHB

In the context of Personal Health Budgets the term brokerage refers to the range of help available to people when developing, implementing and managing / receiving their support. This is distinct from the help that CCG healthcare case managers provide in undertaking assessments and over-seeing clinical need.

The Quality Assurance Framework that NHS Bolton CCG wishes to create will be of interest to those organisations who wish to provide support to patients who are interested in having their PHB funding provided through a Direct Payment or a Third Party PHB.

Bolton CCG is committed to the delivery of Personal Health Budgets, and is actively seeking to ensure that a diverse, robust market for independent brokerage is available for patients.

Personal Health Budgets support services will work directly for the patient or their carer / family making sure that they stay in control of their care and support arrangement. Providers are expected to assist, inform, and support the patient to manage their support package where required.

The provider will provide high quality information and support services to patients interested in having a personal health budget to enable them to choose a care package which enables them to meet their agreed health outcomes in a way which suits them best.

The providers will give information and advice on the different PHB management options.

The specific tasks that providers may be expected to undertake will fall within the following three categories:

Support Planning Implementing the support plan On-going support

Additional information: All procurement documents are available to be downloaded FREE of charge in electronic format from the EU-Supply Electronic Procurement portal, available at https://nhssbs.eu-supply.com ref 26875. Please see attachment which provides user guide and registration instructions for the EU-Supply portal, including help with technical queries. THE DEADLINE FOR RESPONSES is 12 noon, 17 March 2017.