The service was planned so that patients could be treated in the hospital best suited to their medical needs.
The 36 large teaching hospitals were outside this structure; they maintained their own endowment funds and their old boards of governors, who reported directly to the Minister for Health, rather than a Regional Hospital Board.
[3] The National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 replaced the system of Regional Hospital Boards and Hospital Management Committees with regional health authorities in 1974.
(Hospital Management Committees as created under the National Health Service Act should not be confused with the management committees which governed many individual hospitals prior to the creation of the NHS, particularly following the transfer of former workhouse infirmaries to local councils under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1929 by which boards of guardians were abolished.
Aneurin Bevan, who introduced the National Health Service in 1948, was a member of the Tredegar Cottage Hospital management committee around 1928 and was chairman in 1929/30; under the NHS, Tredegar Hospital came under the management of the Rhymney and Sirhowy Valley Hospital Management Committee.