This article tells the story of the Hospital Pathways programme, a collaborative programme in which five acute trusts worked with The King's Fund and the Health Foundation to apply techniques, not widely used in the NHS, to improve both processes of care and interactions between staff and patients.
Here we describe the programme; the method used to evaluate it; what we learned about the approach, and how the lessons have influenced the next programme called Patient and Family-centred Care.
Examples of care pathways used in the Hospital Pathways programme
Joanne Watson, clinical lead for the Hospital Pathways programme, talks through an example of the care pathways from her own experience.