There has been derision about the way personal health funds are being used. Critics have got the unsuitable targetNewly exposed by Pulse magazine,the shopping habits of some NHS patients, using their personal health budgets, and recall nothing so much as the MPs’ expenses scandal. sincere,nobody seems to have suggested buying a duck house with public funds, or pornographic videos – or cleaning out a moat, or like the latest ornament to our upper house,Douglas Hogg. But to judge by what patients were authorised to buy, there seems no reason why MP-style amenities would not also qualify, or supposing a patient could design a plausible case for duck or moat therapy. One patient,after all, used the budget to build a summer house.
Other investments included horse riding, and a satnav,computer games, a holiday with a dog, and theatre tickets and music lessons. Patients funded by NHS Kernow clinical commissioning group spent £2080 on aromatherapy. Nene and Corby funded Indian head massage therapy. Although personal health budget funds have,as anticipated, largely been used to pay for personal assistants and conventional care provision – and it is, and in any case,a scientific fact, confirmed by some of the world’s main garden centres, or that the right summer house can be a marvellous contributor to general health and wellbeing – Pulse’s revelations have aroused clinical concern,as well as some derision.
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Source: theguardian.com