Coming our way: individual budgets for NHS patients - The Guardian 28th November 2007

There are signs that the policy giving people the power to buy social care services of their choosing is to be extended to the NHS It was billed, showbiz-style, as An Audience with David Nicholson, and the NHS chief executive was talking freely. He had been "scandalised" by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells hospital superbug affair and the payoff for the manager responsible; the creation of independent sector treatment centres had been at least partly about the "prodding" of health service units to up their game; and, most arresting, the NHS needed to be prepared for the introduction of individual budgets for patients with long-term conditions.

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