District Health Board - History

History

District Health Boards were first introduced as an idea in the 1970s in the Green and White Paper suggested by the then in-power Labour government. This was part of a plan to nationalise primary health care as the Social Security Act of 1938 had originally intended. Labour subsequently lost the election to Rob Muldoon's National Party in the 1975 election. Muldoon's government chose however to slowly implement these reforms in trial "Area Health Boards", which can be seen as early predecessors of the District Health Boards.

The more direct pre-decessors were the Crown Health Enterprises (CHEs) and subsequent Hospital and Health Services (HHS) management structures of the 1990s; these were responsible for managing the hospitals under business ethos, albeit, with the expectation that the former would return a profit to the shareholders (i.e. the government).

In the 1990s "Regional Health Authorities" (RHA) were formed. These RHAs were amalgamated in 1997 to form the Health Funding Authority ("HFA"). The election of the Labour-Alliance government in the 1999 General Election saw the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 passed by parliament, this led to the merging of the HFA with the Ministry of Health. Part of the HFA's funding capacity combined with the hospital management elements of the Hospital and Health Services board to form the DHBs.