A special health authority is a type of NHS body which provide services on behalf of the National Health Service in England. [1] [2] Unlike other types of trust, they operate nationally rather than serve a specific geographical area.
They are a type of "Non-Administratively Classified Government Entities" of the Department of Health of the United Kingdom. [3] Special health authorities are independent, but can be subject to ministerial direction like other NHS bodies.
While special health authorities may provide services direct to the public, most are concerned with improving the ability of other parts of the NHS to deliver effective health care.
Special health authorities were set to provide a national service to the NHS or the public, under section 11 of the National Health Service Act 1977. [4] [5] [6] Prior to the repeal of the whole of the 1977 Act by the NHS (Consequential Provisions) Act 2006, special health authorities included both infrastructure support organisations and national/specialist treatment providers such as the Special Hospitals Service Authority and the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Special Health Authority. These direct clinical service providers were progressively merged with local NHS trusts and consequently with mainstream governance and funding arrangements.
The support special health authorities are now provided for under section 28 of the National Health Service Act 2006. [7] [8] [9]
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England, along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish Government, Welsh Government or Northern Ireland Executive. It oversees the English National Health Service (NHS). The department is led by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with three ministers of state and three parliamentary under-secretaries of state.
An NHS foundation trust is a semi-autonomous organisational unit within the National Health Service in England. They have a degree of independence from the Department of Health and Social Care. As of March 2019 there were 151 foundation trusts.
An NHS trust is an organisational unit within the National Health Services of England and Wales, generally serving either a geographical area or a specialised function. In any particular location there may be several trusts involved in the different aspects of providing healthcare to the local population. As of April 2020 there were altogether 217 trusts, and they employ around 800,000 of the NHS's 1.2 million staff.
NHS Digital was the trading name of the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which was the national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care in England, particularly those involved with the National Health Service of England. The organisation was an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care.
The Maudsley Hospital is a British psychiatric hospital in south London. The Maudsley is the largest mental health training institution in the UK. It is part of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and works in partnership with the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. The hospital was one of the originating institutions in producing the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines. It is part of the King's Health Partners academic health science centre and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health.
Monitor was an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health, responsible between 2004 and 2016 for ensuring healthcare provision in NHS England was financially effective. It was the sector regulator for health services in England. Its chief executive was Ian Dalton and it was chaired by Dido Harding. Monitor was merged with the NHS Trust Development Authority to form NHS Improvement on 1 April 2016.
The Healthcare Commission was a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Health of the United Kingdom. It was set up to promote and drive improvement in the quality of health care and public health in England and Wales. It aimed to achieve this by becoming an authoritative and trusted source of information and by ensuring that this information is used to drive improvement. The Commission was abolished on 31 March 2009 and its responsibilities in England broadly subsumed by the Care Quality Commission.
Primary care trusts (PCTs) were part of the National Health Service in England from 2001 to 2013. PCTs were largely administrative bodies, responsible for commissioning primary, community and secondary health services from providers. Until 31 May 2011, they also provided community health services directly. Collectively PCTs were responsible for spending around 80 per cent of the total NHS budget. Primary care trusts were abolished on 31 March 2013 as part of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, with their work taken over by clinical commissioning groups.
NHS Scotland, sometimes styled NHSScotland, is the publicly funded healthcare system in Scotland and one of the four systems that make up the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It operates 14 territorial NHS boards across Scotland, supported by seven special non-geographic health boards, and Public Health Scotland.
Health and Social Care (HSC) is the publicly funded healthcare system in Northern Ireland. Although having been created separately to the National Health Service (NHS), it is nonetheless considered a part of the overall national health service in the United Kingdom. The Northern Ireland Executive through its Department of Health is responsible for its funding, while the Public Health Agency is the executive agency responsible for the provision of public health and social care services across Northern Ireland. It is free of charge to all citizens of Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
NHS Resolution, the operating name of NHS Litigation Authority, is an arm's length body of the Department of Health and Social Care. It changed its name in April 2017.
A fraud squad is a police department which investigates fraud and other economic crimes, the largest of which in the United Kingdom is run by the City of London Police.
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 Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde. Primarily funded by the government from general taxation, and overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS provides healthcare to all legal English residents and residents from other regions of the UK, with most services free at the point of use for most people. The NHS also conducts research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Healthcare in England is mainly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), a public body that provides healthcare to all permanent residents in England, that is free at the point of use. The body is one of four forming the UK National Health Service as health is a devolved matter; there are differences with the provisions for healthcare elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and in England it is overseen by NHS England. Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in England, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing and able to pay.
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, also known as SLaM, is an NHS foundation trust based in London, England, which specialises in mental health. It comprises four psychiatric hospitals, the Ladywell Unit based at University Hospital Lewisham, and over 100 community sites and 300 clinical teams. SLaM forms part of the institutions that make up King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre.
The Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) was a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Health of the United Kingdom from 2001 until 2004, when its functions were subsumed by the Healthcare Commission.
Health Education England (HEE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. Its function is to provide national leadership and coordination for the education and training within the health and public health workforce within England. It has been operational since June 2012.
The Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) was a British government agency with the purpose of embedding the principles of sustainable development, social value and the wider determinants of health across the health and social care system in England. In July 2022, as part of 'net zero' plans for the NHS, the SDU was replaced with the Greener NHS National Programme.
The NHS Counter Fraud Authority is a special health authority charged with identifying, investigating and preventing fraud and other economic crime within the NHS and the wider health group, formed on 1 November 2017 under section 28 of the National Health Service Act 2006. It replaces its predecessor NHS Protect, which was part of the NHS Business Services Authority.