Our work on flow In health care, flow is the movement of patients, information and resources within and between services and organisations

Improving the flow of patients, information and resources within and between health and social care organisations has a crucial role to play in coordinating care around the needs of patients, and driving up service quality and productivity.

The importance of flow is increasingly recognised by practice leaders and policymakers throughout the UK. By improving flow health and social care, providers have been able to greatly improve patients’ care experience and also deliver important quality, safety and productivity gains, such as reductions in length of stay, bed occupancy and readmissions.

The Health Foundation has over a decade of experience working on flow through support for a number of large-scale programmes. These include the Flow Coaching Academy (FCA), which has built on learning about care pathway level improvement and training improvement coaches from two previous Health Foundation funded programmes: Flow Cost Quality and the Sheffield Microsystems Coaching Academy. We have also produced several publications on flow, most recently on the challenge and potential of whole system flow