The Health Service Supply Council

Abstract

The establishment by the British Parliament in July 1980 of the Supply Council as a special Health Authority is a unique decision to create a health authority for a particular function, and is the first such statutory body for supplies ever constituted in the United Kingdom. It effectively predetermines change in the National Health Service (NHS) for a function which has, during the life of the NHS, been the subject of six organizational reports. None of which, in the view of various governments and indeed of professional supplies officers and others within the NHS, achieved the efficiency required to obtain best value for the financial resource employed in the acquisition of goods, which for 1981 and 1982 is valued at approximately $1600 million per annum.