Martin Bardsley: New advances in resource allocation

The ability to predict appropriate future expenditure for hospital care for general practices or emerging clinical commissioning groups is a major priority for the NHS.

In this audio slideshow, Dr Martin Bardsley, Head of Research at the Nuffield Trust, gives an overview of a new approach to allocating resources to commissioning organisations in the NHS in England – called Person-based Resource Allocation (PBRA) – which was adopted in 2010 by the Department of Health as part of the fair shares toolkit.

Dr Bardsley explains how this innovative allocation formula, developed by the Nuffield Trust and partners, uses complex data sets to build up estimated budgets at GP practice level, based on the needs of people registered on their lists. He examines the implications and advantages of the new formula over current approaches to resource allocation.

The full findings of this research have been published by the Nuffield Trust in the report: Person-based Resource Allocation: New approaches to estimating budgets for practices (December 2011), by Dr Jennifer Dixon and Dr Martin Bardsley.  Further details about this ongoing work are available on our dedicated project page, which includes a video animation that explains how the formula works.