INNOVATIVE thinking should be encouraged to improve all Government services, but dishing out NHS cash to patients to sort out their own treatment will never work on a large scale.

NHS Oxfordshire is one of nine PCTs trialling a scheme to give long-term patients money – as much as £1,000 a week – to sort out their own care for a range of conditions.

They will be able to choose whether they use the money to buy treatment from the NHS or the private sector.

Trudy Reynolds, the local project manager, says it is about people being asked what they want and being helped to make the best choices.

It is hard to see this ever working on a large scale for a number of reasons.

The first issue is that this can only be seen as the NHS abdicating its responsibility.

Will it lead to patients getting an improved service, being asked what they want and being aided in making better choices?

Surely that’s what the NHS should have been doing for them already? If not then it has been failing.

And the pilot scheme is likely to be useless in assessing if there will be abuse of the system.

The triallists will handpicked and, as a small group, easily monitored. But spread the scheme out and there will be people who take shortcuts on their care and pocket the difference, and in this era that can’t be allowed.