A personal health budget lets someone with NHS continuing healthcare, or certain other NHS-funded needs, choose how their care is delivered at home, often by employing their own carers. The clinical side is higher than a social care package: medication, observations, things that must be recorded at the time and stand up at review. This page covers what to keep and how Carelo keeps it.
A personal health budget is NHS money, agreed in a support plan, that the person or their family controls. Anyone eligible for NHS continuing healthcare at home has a legal right to one. It can be managed by the NHS, by a third party, or as a direct payment to the family. Families who take the direct payment typically employ their own carers, sometimes with a nursing input arranged separately.
The plan sets out the needs, the outcomes, and how the budget will be spent. It is reviewed, at least yearly and more often when needs change. The review asks a simple question: is this plan being delivered, and is it working?
Everything on that list is routine for a care provider. For a family it has meant folders, spreadsheets and a lot of remembering. Carelo takes the same records a provider keeps and gives them to the household.
The medication record is where a personal health budget is most exposed. Many packages involve several medicines at several times, some PRN, some with a level of support that must be written down: prompt, assist or administer. A paper chart in the kitchen records what someone remembered to write. Carelo lists every medicine with its dose, times and level of support, puts the doses due at the top of each call, and records the outcome at the moment the carer taps: given, prompted, not required, refused, not given or other, with a reason where one is needed. The MAR chart is on your screen the same day, with each carer's initials against each dose, and prints for a review.
Built on the provider system. The Personal plan is the same Carelo platform UK domiciliary care providers run, with the company-only parts removed. The record it keeps is the record a CQC-registered provider keeps.
Double-handed calls. A call that needs two carers is rostered as two seats. Both check in, both are on the record, both hours count.
Observations and incidents. Notes are written at the call with activities ticked. Alert notes, body-map reports and incident reports have their own records, and the home page shows what is open.
Locked at check-out. Notes and medication records are written during the call and locked when it ends. What you read at review is what was recorded at the time.
Exportable. The MAR chart, the timesheets and the notes export for a review. The record belongs to your household and is held in the UK.
Anyone you add as a carer can. If a nurse visits under a separate NHS arrangement, they will have their own records; you can still log their visit on your rota for the household's own picture.
Yes. A PRN medicine carries its reason and the carer sees when the last dose was given. Each dose is recorded with the reason it was given.
Export or print it whenever you like. Nothing is shared unless you share it.
Budgets can usually meet reasonable costs of managing the care set out in the plan. Ask the team who agreed your plan and show them what the software records.
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