The Emergency Hospital Service (EHS) of Scotland was an intensive, publicly funded programme of hospital building conducted by the Department of Health for Scotland during the 1940s. The scale and pace of public investment in hospital construction and staffing was unprecedented in Europe.
In a few years the EHS expanded Scottish hospital capacity by 60%, creating 20,500 additional beds.[1] After the war, 13,000 of these EHS hospital beds and the accompanying staff, together with the older Highlands and Islands Medical Service facilities and staff, formed the basis of the Scottish National Health Service, founded in 1948.