Family practitioner committees were established by the National Health Service Re-organisation Act 1973. They replaced local executive councils, which had been established in 1948 to manage primary care.
Executive councils were direct descendants of the
insurance committees established by section 59 of the
National Insurance Act 1911
The National Insurance Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 55) created National Insurance, originally a system of health insurance for industrial workers in Great Britain based on contributions from employers, the government, and the workers themselves. ...
but with additional responsibility for
NHS dentistry and
NHS optician services. Their role was essentially neutral and routine. They played little part in developing the services they administered. There were 138 executive councils in England and Wales and 25 in Scotland. The role of the council was to maintain GPs’ lists of patients and to receive practitioners’ claims for payment. It was headed by an administrator with managerial control only over the staff, not the practitioners.
Each family practitioner committee had thirty members, eleven of which were appointed by the
area health authority with which it was coterminous. Eight were appointed by the
local medical committee, three by the
local dental committee, two by the
local pharmaceutical committee, two by the
local optical committee and four by the local authority.
One of the tasks of the committee was to maintain lists of registered patients and registered practitioners.
The
National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
abolished the committees, and they were replaced by family health services authorities. Nearly half of all family practitioner committee administrators were sacked, and the new appointees came from outside the NHS, nearly all from industry or the armed forces. The functions of the FHSAs were later subsumed into
primary care trust
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 ...
s. The Family Health Services Appeal Authority was established to hear appeals and applications resulting from decisions made about the inclusion of patients and practitioners in lists. It was abolished in 2005.
References
{{reflist
External links
National Health Service Re-organisation Act 1973
Defunct National Health Service organisations
National Health Service (England)