Integration and the Intelligence Function

Abstract

The early 1990s have been a time of enormous change for health services and health service staff in the United Kingdom. Throughout the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) policy decisions have been implemented which rearrange management structures. The basis of this activity has been the “purchaser-provider split”. This separation of the management of local health service providers has produced local policy makers who commission care - the purchasers, and hospitals and community health services which enter into contracts with the purchasers to provide care. The tendency has been for local health authorities, the purchasers, to combine with each other to allow more strategic use of their purchasing power. Increasingly the district health authorities in England and Wales are also combining their expertise and priorities with those of the Family Health Service Authorities, the bodies which commission and support the local services of family doctors and dentists, community pharmacists and optometrists.