National publications/papers on the history of community hospitals

A fascinating account of cottage hospitals, illustrating their development with well-informed and thoroughly researched local accounts. The late Dr Emrys-Roberts helped to found the Community Hospitals Association, and was President for many years. He wrote this publication to coincide with the 21st Anniversary of the formation of the CHA.

The Department of Health (DH) with Community Health Partnership (CHP) commissioned a study from the Community Hospitals Association (CHA) to provide a profile of community hospitals in England in 1998 and 2008, demonstrating changes and trends over the 10-year period. This was the CHA Profiling Report.

The study found that there was an increase in diversification of community hospitals. In addition to the 296 classic community hospitals with beds, there were 16 community hubs (without beds), 1 community ward in a DGH, 3 rehabilitation/intermediate care units and 7 examples of partnerships with care homes.

The Directory was published in 1999 and recorded 468 community hospitals in the UK.

The directory listed community hospitals by name, location, address, population served, the name of the nearest DGH and the distance from the community hospital to the DGH. A profile of the hospital services was listed, including number of beds, and whether the hospital had services such as casualty, X-ray etc

The CHA, (previously known as the Association of General Practitioner Hospitals) published a directory in 1985 that listed 415 community hospitals in the UK. 

In addition to profile data, the directory also provided activity data.  This included the number of beds, the number of discharges/deaths, occupancy rate and the length of stay. Also recorded were the number of surgical procedures carried out under general anaesthetic, casualty and outpatient clinic attendances and X-ray units.