The Dynamics of Care: Understanding People Flows in Health and Social Care

This book describes numerous projects which shed light on some of the most persistent issues of the day in health and social care. The work demonstrates the importance of embedding the concept of flow into everyday health and social care thinking and creates insights into patient journeys through different conditions and treatments. It suggests that improving throughput across agencies is the key way to improving the performance of health treatment, whereas increasing capacity is the key way to improving the performance of social care by retaining independent living. The authors conclude that for state-provided care, balancing health and social care provision can eliminate the many stressful fire-fighting strategies hospitals have to undertake when faced with high demands, and this is a win-win scenario in terms of patients, staff and costs. Further, that there is a need for better understanding of the dynamics of population ageing, the dynamics of health conditions and the provision of better, integrated information systems. The book will be a valuable resource for practitioners, clinicians, managers and academics in health, social work, public health and public policy in many countries.

Eric Wolstenholme: Eric began his career in engineering in which he holds a first degree and doctorate. Following a master’s degree in operational research he worked in the Operational Research Executive and Purchasing Department of British Coal before becoming an academic in Management Science at the Bradford School of Management. He has held full Professorial posts at, Stirling Leeds Beckett and London South Bank Universities in Management Science and Business Learning as well as helping to establish and direct two management consultancies - Cognitus and Symmetric. He has written two previous books and a wide range of peer reviewed research articles. Eric has an international reputation for his academic and consulting work and has been President of both the International Systems Dynamics Society and its UK Chapter. He was the founding Editor of the System Dynamics Review and in 2004 received the prestigious Jay Wright Forrester award for his contribution to System Dynamics. In2019 he received an Outstanding Contribution award from the UK Chapter of the System Dynamics Society.