About us

The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to improve the quality of healthcare in the UK.

We want the UK to have a healthcare system of the highest possible quality – safe, effective, person-centred, timely, efficient and equitable. We believe that in order to achieve this, health services need to continually improve the way they work.

We are here to inspire and create the space for people to make lasting improvements to health services.

We conduct research and evaluation, put ideas into practice through a range of improvement programmes, support and develop leaders and share evidence to drive wider change.

Our work is also focused around two priority areas:

Patient safety

Our goal is a healthcare system where patients always receive safe and reliable care. We promote an active approach to identifying potential risk while helping to improve monitoring and measuring and create a culture in which safety concerns are freely and openly discussed.

An example of our work on patient safety is our Safer Clinical Systems programme, which is helping health professionals identify the root causes of risk using ideas borrowed from safety-critical industries.

Read more about our wider work in patient safety.

Person-centred care

We want a more person-centred healthcare system. One that supports people to make informed decisions about and successfully manage their own health and care, including choosing when to let others act on our behalf. We want healthcare services to deliver care responsive to people’s individual abilities, preferences, lifestyles and goals.

This requires a change in behaviour and mindset from patients and clinicians, supported by a system that puts patients at its heart. We are working with patients, professionals, and healthcare providers so that people have a better healthcare experience and better health. Over the coming year we will be building recognition and understanding of what a person-centred NHS looks like and sharing evidence and practical tools to enable us to support wider change.

Find out more about our person-centred care work.

You can also find out more about our work on shared decision making and self management support.

• Watch a short animation that describes what we do
• Find out more about our approach and values
• Use our interactive map to explore our current work