A report on the purpose and activities of the Trust, 1939-1948.

  • Nuffield Trust
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on the purpose and activities of the Trust, 1939-1948. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/60 page 11
    I] THE WORK OF THE TRUST UP TO 5 JULY 1948 1. THE HOSPITAL CO-ORDINATION SCHEME THE BACKGROUND AGAINST WHICH THE TRUST STARTED ITS WORK WHAT was the background against which the Trust set to work? Upon what kind of experience could it draw? What efforts had been made in the past, what difficulties encountered, what progress achieved? The idea of a co-ordination of hospital services was not a new one, but, so far, the attempts made to translate it into action had come to very little. As far back as 1919 the report of the Consultative Committee on Medical and Allied Services (appointed by the Ministry of Health under the chairmanship of the late Lord Dawson of Penn) had: advocated the amalgamation of municipal and voluntary agencies as the basis of a scheme for the establishment of health authorities whose task it would be to administer locally all forms of medical service. Later, both the Voluntary Hospitals (‘Cave’) Committee, set up by the Ministry of Health, and regional committees established by the British Hospitals Association, attempted to bring about closer relations between the voluntary hospitals of given areas. Section 13 of the Local Government Act, 1929 (later repealed by the Public Health Act, 1936), gave for the first time statutory expression to the need for co-operation between voluntary hospitals and local authorities. The Public Health Act, 1936, made it obligatory for a local authority, when making provision for hospital accommodation, to consult a committee or other body repre- sentative of the governing bodies and the medical and surgical staffs of the voluntary hospitals in the area.
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