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 (such as an ambulance service). 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.
11-552: NHS trusts were established under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 and were set up in five waves. Each one was established by a statutory instrument . NHS trusts are not trusts in the legal sense but are in effect public sector corporations . Each trust is headed by a board consisting of executive and non-executive directors , and is chaired by a non-executive director. There were about 2,200 non-executives across 470 organisations in
22-582: A residential home setting. It established GP Fundholding . Finally, the Act made provision for the establishment of family health services authorities in place of family practitioner committees and for the establishment of NHS trusts . This legislation in the United Kingdom , or its constituent jurisdictions, article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Local authority Too Many Requests If you report this error to
33-618: The NHS in England in 2015. Non-executive directors are recruited by open advertisement. All trusts ( foundation trusts and those which have yet to reach foundation trust status) are regulated by NHS England and the Care Quality Commission . Board members are, from November 2014, subject to a fit and proper person test . All trust boards are required to have an audit committee consisting only of non-executive directors, on which
44-528: The above categories of NHS trust. Successive governments have announced that all NHS trusts should become foundation trusts, and deadlines have been set for this transformation, which have repeatedly been missed. Several special health authorities , organised on a national basis, deal with NHS-wide issues. An example is NHS Blood and Transplant . National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 The National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 (c. 19 ) introduced an internal market into
55-514: The chair may not sit. This committee is entrusted not only with the supervision of financial audit , but of systems of corporate governance within the trust. Hospital board members have a duty to act on signals of poor performance on quality and safety data, and yet many of the papers presented to them have been found to be lacking good data visualisations. The High Court of Justice decided in December 2019 that NHS trusts were not charities for
66-496: The kinds of criteria that have been set by Monitor ." There are several types of NHS trusts: Over time the distinction between different types has eroded, and both hospital and mental health trusts have taken on responsibility for various community services. Sustainability and transformation plans all propose to move services out of hospitals into the community and the hospital trusts are generally planning to follow these initiatives. Foundation trust status may be applied for by
77-577: The purposes of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 , so they have to pay business rates at the full rate. A study by the University of Exeter in 2020 found that in 70 out of the 213 trusts all the board members were white. Overall BAME representation at board level was 8.9%. Medical directors of BAME ethnicity accounted for 19.4%, about the same as the overall percentage of BAME doctors. In September 2015 Jeremy Hunt
88-455: The results determine whether or not care or social services will be provided. This also ensures that the people giving the care follow a certain set of rules called the care value base. Local authority resources can be taken into account during the assessment process, but if it is deemed that services are required, those services must be provided by law: services cannot be withdrawn at a later date if resources become limited. The Act also split
99-489: The role of district health authorities and local authorities by changing their internal structure, so that local authority departments assess the needs of the local population and then purchase the necessary services from 'providers'. To become 'providers' in the internal market, health organisations became NHS trusts, competing with each other. Community care ensures that people in need of long-term care are now able to live either in their own home, with adequate support, or in
110-485: The supply of healthcare in the United Kingdom, making the state an 'enabler' rather than a supplier of health and social care provision. The Act states that it is a duty for local authorities to assess people for social care and support to ensure that people who need community care services or other types of support get the services they are entitled to. Patients have their needs and circumstances assessed and
121-401: Was reported as saying "I think we do have too many trusts as independent organisations" in a context where mergers between trusts and the establishment of chains of hospitals were being discussed. Subsequently Simon Stevens made it clear that he did not expect the remaining NHS trusts to become foundation trusts, saying "We are frankly kidding ourselves if we think the non-FTs are going to pass
SECTION 10
#1732780812767#766233