Contracting for high‐tech health care for patients at home: a survey of purchaser responses

Points out that the Department of Health’s Executive Letter: EL(95)5 moved the finance of high technology treatment provided at home for chronically ill patients from the NHS prescribing budget onto a defined and consistent framework. The aim was to obtain better value for money by encouraging competition between potential homecare providers. Reports on a survey of prescribing advisers of purchasing health authorities, which focused on their response to these developments, and discusses the issues identified by purchasers in their implementation of EL(95)5. Notes that, although most purchasers chose to contract directly with a single commercial homecare organization in 1995‐1996, there was no consensus about where contracts should be placed in the future, and that the purchasers identified inefficiencies in contracting for such care. Discusses methods of improving the purchasers’ response to contracting.