District health authority

History

A Royal Commission on the National Health Service was established in 1975 and published its report in July 1979. It heard complaints that the AHAs created under the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 added an extra and unnecessary tier of management. Although the 1973 Act had established a two-tier system of AHAs and RHAs, there was, in effect, a third lower administrative tier as the work of hospital management was done at district general hospital level.

The 'Patients First' consultation document was published in December 1979 which largely agreed with recommendations made by the Royal Commission to reduce the number of administrative tiers. In 1982, the 90 AHAs were abolished and replaced by 192 DHAs under the Health Services Act 1980, but the RHAs remained. DHAs were established centred on district hospitals, and not necessarily aligned to local authority boundaries as the 90 AHAs had been.

Just as the AHAs had done, each DHA worked alongside a family practitioner committee (replaced by family health services authorities in 1990), which was responsible for managing primary care services such as general practice, pharmacy and dentistry.

The districts were reorganised on a number of occasions in the 1990s, and in 1996, new single-tier health authorities replaced DHAs and family health services authorities as a result of the Health Authorities Act 1995.

References

References

1. "Health Services Act 1980".
2. (July 1979). "Royal Commission on the NHS Chapter 4". HMSO.
3. "NHS Reorganisation Act 1973".
4. (20 September 1999). "The changing role of health authorities". BBC News.