Independent Nurse: PCTs urged to set indicative budgets for community care.(Primary Care Trust)(Brief article)

PCTs should set indicative budgets for community services under new guidance on practice-based commissioning from the DoH.

The guidance says PCTs should calculate the budgets, even if only on a whole time equivalent or per capita population basis, so practices can assess their spending for community nursing and mental health services.

There will also be benchmarking of these costs across PCTs, strategic health authorities (SHAs) and at a national level that will eventually allow price bands for these services that do not have a Payment by Results tariff.

However, the document makes no mention of whether this will supercede government intentions to …