regional health authority (UK)

This article is about regional health authorities in the United Kingdom. For Norwegian authorities see Regional health authority (Norway).

Fourteen regional health authorities were established in England by the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 in 1974, replacing the English regional hospital boards. This reorganisation was planned by the Conservative government of Edward Heath, but survived the General Election 1974. The new Labour government published a paper on Democracy in the NHS in May 1974 that added local government representatives to the new RHAs and increased their proportion on each area health authority to a third.