A special health authority is a type of NHS body which provide services on behalf of the National Health Service in England . Unlike other types of trust, they operate nationally rather than serve a specific geographical area.
4-713: The Special Hospitals Service Authority ( SHSA ) was a special health authority of the National Health Service in England from 1989 to 1996. It had responsibility for managing the three high-security "special" psychiatric hospitals in England: Ashworth , Broadmoor and Rampton . The SHSA was established to distance the hospitals from the direct control of the Department of Health . Its Operational Brief set out six principal objectives: This document also stated that
8-621: The Authority should be "constituted as a small organisation, operating flexibly and maximising delegation of operational responsibility to hospital level, rather than acting as a centralised interventionist body". To this end, a Unit General Manager was appointed to oversee the work of each of the three hospitals. The Authority was abolished in 1996, when its commissioning functions passed to the High Security Psychiatric Services Commissioning Board, while each of
12-494: The hospitals became independently managed as a Special Health Authority in its own right. NHS special health authority They are a type of "Non-Administratively Classified Government Entities" of the Department of Health of the United Kingdom . 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
16-617: 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 . 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
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