:This article is about regional health authorities in the United Kingdom. For Norwegian authorities see ''
Regional health authority (Norway)''.
Fourteen regional health authorities were established in England by the
National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973
The National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The purpose of the Act was to reorganise the National Health Service. This was the first time the service had been reorganised since it was ...
in 1974, replacing the English
regional hospital boards. This reorganisation was planned by the Conservative government of Edward Heath, but survived the
General Election 1974. The new Labour government published a paper on ''Democracy in the NHS'' in May 1974 that added local government representatives to the new RHAs and increased their proportion on each
area health authority to a third.
They were responsible for strategy, the building programme, staffing matters and the allocation of resources to their 90 subordinate area health authorities.
In 1996 the fourteen regional health authorities were abolished by the
Health Authorities Act 1995
The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the ...
and replaced by eight regional offices of the
NHS Executive. They were then abolished in their turn by the
Health and Social Care Act 2012
The Health and Social Care Act 2012c 7 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provided for the most extensive reorganisation of the structure of the National Health Service in England to date.'' BMJ'', 2011; 342:d408Dr Lansley's M ...
. But the delegation of authority to
DevoManc was hailed by the editor of the ''
British Medical Journal
''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origin ...
'' as a possible regeneration of RHAs.
See also
*
List of NHS regional health authorities (before 1996)
From 1974 to 1996 the NHS in England was administered by regional health authorities. The regions closely followed the areas of the previous regional hospital boards established in 1947, but in many cases they were renamed.
Each region was subdi ...
References
{{reflist
Defunct National Health Service organisations