ABSTRACT
The last two years have seen a rapid change in the community health care services in the UK. The Blair Labour government promised a radical change in the way that health services out of hospital would be delivered. The following year saw such a flurry of policy changes, central health service guidelines (albeit usually two months late) and structural change that it was hard to believe the rhetoric about 'evolution not revolution'. This 'policy-itis' may have subsided a little, and it is time to take stock of what has been achieved and how this might affect community nursing in the first years of the next millennium.
