Building a system that flows: Now, Next and Future

The health and care system is under more pressure than ever. But in every conversation with local leaders, frontline health and care professionals and importantly citizens, I’ve heard the same clarity of ambition:

People want to live well, independently at home

Professionals want care to be simpler, faster, and more joined-up

Leaders want to shift the system from crisis to prevention.

The challenge isn’t knowing what we want to achieve, it’s simplifying these ambitions into a vision that can help create a shared system ambition on what good looks like, and how we achieve it.

That’s why we’ve created the Channel³ health and care blueprint:

To help organisations  visualise the future they want to see and define the pathway to achieving it.

This isn’t another abstract framework. It’s a practical picture of how care can flow differently, backed by the digital, workforce, and commissioning changes that make it stick.

The key principle is the system has to focus much more on ‘flow’ in everything it does.

Firstly, by focusing more on how we can help people manage their own care and independence wherever possible.

Secondly, by moving towards a more proactive and preventative approach where people have health and care needs, to reduce their escalation.

And thirdly by a relentless focus on a drive back to independence when people do need any kind of acute care.

At its heart is a simple, testable aspiration:

One person. One plan. One team – home and independence first.

Because technology can now create connected care, connected records, connected teams.

The health and care blueprint is shaped by starting with the future we want to create and focusing on what’s already working in places across the country. It reflects the leadership, adaptability, and resourcefulness we see every day from frontline teams and system partners. It draws together examples of what’s possible now, next and future, to demonstrate that the future we all want to achieve doesn’t have to be decades away.

We know the pressures aren’t going away. But change is already happening. Some of the most powerful improvements come from the smallest shifts: a shared plan in the workflow, a same-day decision made with confidence, a person discharged to recover at home with the right support already in place.

Our blueprint is here to help challenge us all to make those shifts faster, easier, and more consistent across organisations, across pathways, and across the country.

Let’s build a system that doesn’t just cope, but flows.

Leo Jones,

Chief Executive, Channel³ Consulting