ABSTRACT
The National Health Service took the services as they had developed by 1946 and fixed them with legislation in what was virtually a tripartite structure. When illness was largely episodic and attendance at a hospital or doctor’s surgery an isolated incident in life such divisions mattered less, but it so happened that the National Health Service came into being as both the population profile and the health needs of the community were changing, and these changes affected not only the new need for continuity but also the cost of the service.
