HEIW launches national Optimising Hospital Patient Flow Hub

Published 31/03/2026

Patient flow is one of the most persistent challenges facing urgent and emergency care services across Wales. Seasonal illnesses such as norovirus and flu place additional pressure on hospital capacity each year, amplifying existing bottlenecks in admitting, treating and discharging patients. 

Efficient patient flow ensures people move smoothly through each stage of their care journey, from admission through to discharge or transfer, without unnecessary delay. When flow breaks down, hospitals can struggle to admit patients from emergency departments, leading to longer waiting times and increased pressure across NHS Wales. 

To help the workforce tackle these challenges, Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) has launched the Optimising Hospital Patient Flow Hub on Y Tŷ Dysgu, the national elearning platform for NHS Wales. 

The new hub provides a shared, national space for health and care professionals, managers and system leaders to exchange knowledge, access practical tools and learn from innovations already making a difference across Wales. By bringing people together across organisations and disciplines, the hub supports a more consistent and coo-ordinated approach to improving patient flow.  

Working in isolation can make resolving flow issues difficult. The hub enables teams to learn from one another, adopt consistent approaches and share solutions that have already proven successful elsewhere.   

Lisa Basset, Programme Manager for Urgent and Emergency Care at HEIW, said:

“Improving patient flow and achieving timely discharge is not something any one team or organisation can solve alone. By working together, sharing learning and building on what already works across Wales, we can reduce unnecessary delays, improve patient experience and ensure people receive care in the right place, at the right time.” 

Last year, HEIW collaborated with the National Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care Programme, to design and deliver a Wales-wide series of Supporting Discharge Planning and Optimising Hospital Patient Flow webinars. 

The series aimed to build confidence among health and care professionals to apply the Optimising Hospital Patient Flow Framework in practice. Developed to reduce unnecessary hospital stays and support timely discharge, the OHFF promotes approaches that enable patients to recover in the most appropriate setting. 

Each webinar provided practical insights into how the principles can make a difference day to day, including: 

• Effective patient discharge planning: clear, early and proactive discharge planning helps avoid delays, ensures patients return home or to community care safely, and frees up hospital beds for those who need them most. 

• Empowering nurses and the multidisciplinary team in ward rounds: strengthening the role and voice of the whole MDT in ward rounds helps identify issues earlier, supports timely decisionmaking, and ensures patients’ needs are reviewed consistently and efficiently. 
• Appropriate use of therapy referrals: using therapy referrals effectively ensures patients receive timely assessments and rehabilitation support, reducing avoidable deterioration and enabling safe, earlier discharge. 
• Practical strategies to free up acute beds: the webinars shared real examples of how teams across Wales are improving flow, from enhanced discharge coordination to better use of same day pathways. 

The webinars, which were recorded and now available to watch within the new Optimising Hospital Patient Flow Hub on Y Tŷ Dysgu, were well received by staff across NHS Wales, with over 350 attendees and positive feedback from participants. 

An anonymous attendee said:

“This should become part of the All Wales Mandatory training for all staff, whether frontline or not as it would progress understanding amongst the general public that hospital is not a place of safety when you do not need to be there and that long admissions create more problems than they solve." 

Clinical Lead for the National Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care Programme, Dr Siobhan Lewis, said: 

“The webinar series showed the real value of bringing people together to focus on practical solutions. By sharing examples from across Wales and linking them to the Six Goals for Urgent and Emergency Care, we’ve helped teams build confidence to apply the Optimising Hospital Flow Framework in their own settings and make meaningful improvements to discharge planning and patient flow.” 

Designed for multiprofessionals, the Optimising Hospital Patient Flow Hub is available on Y Tŷ Dysgu.

HEIW continues to support the resilience of urgent and emergency care services in Wales through a range of initiatives. More information is available on the Urgent and Emergency Care programme webpage: Urgent and emergency care programme - HEIW