ABSTRACT
The National Health Service (NHS) has undergone a process of continuous and substantial change during the last 30 years, which has impacted significantly on its structure, organisation and management. An appreciation of the historical perspective through a review of major landmarks in this process is essential to an understanding of how NHS management arrangements have evolved and how this impacts on the Allied Health Professions (AHPs) in the 21st century. An important aspect of the AHP manager’s role is to ensure that the positive and wide-ranging contributions of their services, including consultant, specialist and extended scope practitioner posts and the many other facets of modernisation and service improvement, are widely recognised and understood by commissioners, directors and managers, all other service providers and the service users as essential and integral to high-quality healthcare service provision.
