PatientPath 2026: Optimising NHS Pathways to Improve Patient Flow
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PatientPath 2026: Optimising NHS Pathways to Improve Patient Flow
A Strategic Summit on Optimising Patient Flow and System Coordination Across the NHS - All Convenzis Events Provide 8 CPD Points Per Delegate.
Take part in our conference prize draw by visiting all stands and scanning your lanyard at each for a chance to win £100 voucher.
Sponsors & Partners
Current Landscape and Challenges
Patient flow is the central challenge and opportunity in modern NHS operations. From the “front door” of emergency departments to the “back door” of discharge and community care, every handover and pathway transition impacts both operational performance and patient experience.
The NHS remains under sustained pressure to improve flow across urgent and emergency care pathways. Rising demand, bed constraints, delayed discharges, workforce pressures, and variation in access to community services continue to challenge system performance.
National priorities around urgent and emergency care recovery and neighbourhood health services all point towards reducing avoidable admissions, accelerating safe discharge, and strengthening community-based alternatives to hospital care. Achieving this requires not only pathway redesign, but also stronger operational capability, system-wide collaboration, and the effective use of technology, data, and digital tools to support real-time decision-making.
Summit Focus
PatientPath focuses on improving patient flow across the whole system, helping delegates build practical skills in pathway redesign, demand management, discharge optimisation, and operational decision-making.
Through interactive Skill Clinics and Lessons Learned Sessions, participants will explore how to successfully implement SDEC, virtual wards, SAFER principles, and Discharge to Assess models in real-world settings.
The summit will also examine how technology can enable better flow through digital bed management, predictive analytics, patient tracking, interoperability, and AI-supported operational planning.
Focused on practical delivery rather than policy alone, PatientPath brings together frontline clinicians, operational leaders, community providers, and digital innovators to share proven approaches for reducing bottlenecks, improving coordination, and delivering better patient outcomes.
This year’s event is structured around clear outcomes. Delegates will leave understanding:
- Admission avoidance: Implementing SDEC, virtual wards, and urgent community response services to reduce unnecessary admissions and support care closer to home.
- SAFER inpatient flow: Applying SAFER principles to improve flow, reduce delays, and enable timely discharge.
- Discharge and transfer: Embedding Discharge to Assess and multi-agency discharge models to reduce delays and improve system flow.
- Emergency department flow: Enhancing streaming, triage, and rapid decision-making through senior-led clinical models.
- Integrated care pathways: Developing joined-up pathways across acute, community, primary, and social care services.
- Capacity and flow management: Using data-driven approaches to manage capacity, escalation, and bed flow effectively.
- Digital innovation: Leveraging digital tools, shared records, real-time data, and virtual care to improve coordination and decision-making.
Why Attend
- Earn 8 CPD Points
- Build practical skills to improve patient flow across urgent and emergency care pathways.
- Gain actionable tools for discharge planning, admission avoidance, and capacity management.
- Learn directly from operational leaders delivering system-wide flow improvement.
- Understand how to implement integrated working across acute, community, and social care partners.
- Leave with usable frameworks, checklists, and improvement plans for immediate application.
Who Would Benefit
This summit is ideal for urgent and emergency care leaders, acute trust executives, operational managers, clinicians, flow coordinators, discharge teams, and community care leaders responsible for improving patient pathways and reducing delays. It will also benefit primary care professionals, social care leaders, and system integration teams seeking practical methods to improve cross-sector coordination and reduce avoidable hospital admissions. Suppliers and partners supporting urgent care, digital flow systems, diagnostics, and community care services will gain clear insight into the operational priorities shaping NHS transformation over the next decade.
Relevance for Sponsors
This summit provides a highly targeted platform for suppliers, technology providers, and partners supporting patient flow, operational performance, and pathway transformation across the NHS. Sponsors will be well positioned to demonstrate how their solutions enable:
- Digital patient flow, bed management, and capacity optimisation platforms
- Real-time operational command centres, patient tracking, and visibility tools
- Predictive analytics, demand forecasting, and AI-supported decision-making solutions
- Shared care records, interoperability, and integrated care coordination systems
- Virtual wards, remote monitoring, and hospital-at-home technologies
- Discharge planning, transfer of care, and Discharge to Assess support platforms
- Workforce management, e-rostering, staffing optimisation, and productivity solutions
- Clinical decision support, triage, streaming, and SDEC-enabling technologies
- Community care coordination, referral management, and neighbourhood health service platforms
- Automation tools that reduce administrative burden and streamline pathway management
- Population health analytics, risk stratification, and flow intelligence solutions
- Learning, simulation, and workforce development platforms that support operational improvement and pathway redesign
- Infrastructure, communications, and digital transformation services that enable integrated care delivery across organisations
Through speaking opportunities, exhibitions, demonstrations, and interactive sessions, partners will be able to align their solutions directly to NHS priorities around urgent and emergency care recovery, admission avoidance, discharge optimisation, and system-wide flow improvement. The event offers access to senior operational leaders, clinicians, discharge teams, community providers, digital transformation leads, and integrated care decision-makers responsible for implementing patient flow initiatives and pathway redesign programmes across acute, community, primary care, and social care settings.
Your Pass Includes....
- This conference is CPD accredited. Attendees will be eligible to gain 8 CPD points upon completion of the event.
- Access to a leading conference speaker programme
- Interactive Q&A sessions
- Leadership Lessons from the Front Line
- Cross-sector best practice
- Meet the supplier opportunities
- Hot breakfast & Lunch included
Tickets For NHS Senior Managers
We have an invite only option for NHS Senior Managers for our conference, to see if you qualify for a complimentary place please click the button below.
Conference Speakers
Leah
Sugarman
Emergency Medicine Consultant
Senior Clinical Decision Maker, South West London ICC
Read biography
Liz
Deutsch
Professor for Nursing Practice
Centre for Care Excellence, Coventry University and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust
Read biography
The programme
Registration & Networking
Registration - Open from 8:20 am - Closes at 11:00 am
All delegates must complete their registration process before the 11:00 AM cut-off time. Please arrive in a timely manner to allow for registration and to avoid any inconvenience. Delegates who arrive after the registration deadline will be refused entry to the event.
We appreciate your cooperation in helping us maintain the event's schedule and ensuring that everyone can fully participate in the conference. If you have any questions or require assistance, our event staff will be available to assist you with the registration process.
Thank you for your understanding, and we look forward to an insightful and productive event together!
Chair Opening Address
Take part in our conference prize draw by visiting all stands and scanning your lanyard at each for a chance to win £100 voucher. The draw will take place at the end of the final presentation.
Keynote Presentation -From Hospital to Home: Bolton’s Community Response Journey
Speaker:
- Patrick Farrell | Head of Improvement, GIRFT UEC Team, Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme, NHS England
- Bolton NHS Trust Speaker TBC
Session Overview:
This presentation will showcase the improvement journey with Bolton NHS Trust, focusing on the implementation of the Community Response Team.
The approach aims to keep older and vulnerable people safely at home, reduce avoidable hospital admissions, and provide timely care in the right place.
It will highlight:
- The development and impact of the Community Response Team.
- Closer integration with care homes to identify and respond to deterioration earlier.
- Partnership working across health, social care and community services.
- The learning and improvements achieved throughout the journey.
Ultimately, the programme demonstrates a shift from hospital-based care to integrated, community-based support, helping people remain safely and independently at home.
Morning Skills Clinic - Digital Access, Data and Flow: Designing Connected Pathways That Work for Everyone
Speaker:
Amanda Jackson | Associate Chief Clinical Information Officer & Digital Inclusion Lead, Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Rachel Williams | Associate Chief Operating Officer, South Warwickshire University Foundation Trust
Session Overview:
A practical discussion on using digital tools, real-time information and inclusive service design to improve coordination, reduce pathway friction and support better patient flow.
Main Sponsor
Main Sponsor
Morning Break & Networking
Got a great question? Ask it during the session for a chance to win a voucher for the best audience question.
Case Study - What the NHS can learn from Norway about patient flow
Case Study - DNV Imatis
Session Overview:
What Norway’s approach can teach us about system-wide coordination.
Across the NHS, patient flow isn’t failing because hospitals aren’t working hard enough, but because demand and care pathways now operate system-wide, while operational flow is still often managed locally using fragmented processes and disconnected systems.
Leading healthcare systems such as Norway have taken a different approach. They do not treat patient flow purely as a hospital challenge, but as a real-time coordination challenge spanning the entire care pathway.
This session explores how DNV Imatis has helped operationalise that approach at scale connecting people, workflows and operational data to improve coordination, unlock capacity and support safer, more efficient care delivery.
Case Study - GAMA Healthcare
Case Study - GAMA Healthcare
GAMA Healthcare, established in 2004 by doctors Guy Braverman and Allen Hanouka, leads in the manufacture and distribution of innovative infection prevention solutions that help prevent healthcare-associated infections around the world.
With leading healthcare brands including Clinell, HEXI, Rediair and Rediroom, GAMA’s technologies are used in 9 out of 10 hospitals in the UK’s NHS.
As a dynamic company with scientific and clinical excellence at its core, GAMA is committed to providing innovative solutions and professional support. Pioneering research and continuous innovation from GAMA’s state-of-the-art laboratory (Fellows Research Centre) and providing comprehensive infection prevention training and education to end users.
Leadership Interview Session - Leveraging Digital Tools, Shared Records, Real-Time Data and Virtual Care to Improve Coordination and Decision-Making
Speaker: Emily Godfrey, Implementation Manager, NHS England
Session Overview:
This interview session will explore how digital innovation, from shared care records and real-time operational data to virtual care, is enabling better coordination, faster decision-making and more integrated care. Speakers will reflect on the leadership, culture and collaboration needed to embed digital change, overcome implementation challenges and deliver lasting improvements for patients, staff and system performance.
Case Study - AI guidance for DVT ultrasound
Case Study - Thinksono
Session Overview:
A&E and Acute Medical units are under increasing pressures with waiting times consistently being highlighted through the media. Many ultrasound departments are running at over 100% capacity slowing diagnosis for patients and potentially blocking beds. National guidelines, set by NICE for DVT ultrasound outlines that patients with a suspected DVT should be diagnosed within 4 hours, or 24h hours if covered by anticoagulation. In this presentation, we'll demonstrate this issues and highlight how ThinkSono can shorten the waiting time, reduce the burden on Emergency departments and free up capacity with ultrasound to better serve the demands within the hospital, whilst maintaining the highest clinical safety standards.
Lunch & Networking
Got a great question? Ask it during the session for a chance to win a voucher for the best audience question.
Case Study - QuidelOrtho
Case Study - QuidelOrtho
With expertise spanning clinical chemistry, immunoassay, immunohematology and molecular testing, QuidelOrtho Corporation (Nasdaq: QDEL) is a leading global provider of diagnostic solutions, delivering fast, accurate and reliable results that help improve patient outcomes from the point of care to lab, clinic to hospital. Building on a legacy of innovation, QuidelOrtho works with healthcare providers to advance diagnostics that connect insights with solutions, defining a clearer path for informed decisions and better care.
NHS Deep Dive - Home First Multidisciplinary Mode
Session Overview:
A 20-minute presentation session will showcase the journey of developing and delivering a high-quality, multidisciplinary “one team” approach focused on admission avoidance and effective hospital discharge support. It will highlight the key stages of service design, implementation, and continuous improvement, demonstrating how collaborative working across professional boundaries can enhance patient outcomes and system efficiency. The session will also explore challenges encountered, lessons learned, and measurable impacts, providing practical insights and examples. This presentation is intended to support and inspire others who are interested in replicating or adapting a similar integrated model within their own organisations or care systems.
Key Areas:
- Development of a multidisciplinary “one team” approach to support admission avoidance and hospital discharge.
- Key insights into implementation, challenges, and measurable impact on patient outcomes and system efficiency.
- Practical learning and guidance to help others replicate or adapt the model in their own services.
Case Study - Nexus Consulting
Case Study - Nexus Consulting
NHS Deep Dive - The North Tees Acute Biliary Pathway: Improving Patient Flow Through Earlier Definitive Treatment
Session Overview
This session will share how North Tees redesigned acute biliary care to address delays in definitive treatment and the resulting pressure on emergency beds, repeat admissions and elective waiting lists. It will explain how a combined model of index admission and planned urgent surgery created a more reliable route to definitive care, supported by dedicated theatre capacity, specialist nurse coordination, surgical hub use, risk based imaging and single stage bile duct exploration.
The presentation will also explore how Model Health data, demand and capacity work and closer collaboration between clinicians, operational teams and finance supported the case for change. It will share the challenges encountered and practical learning for services seeking to adapt the GIRFT emergency gallbladder guidance within local constraints.
Key Areas:
- Understanding how delayed definitive treatment creates repeat demand, longer hospital stays and pressure on emergency and elective capacity.
- Building a reliable pathway using index and planned urgent surgery, dedicated theatre lists, specialist nurse coordination, surgical hubs and single stage bile duct exploration.
- Using national data, demand and capacity modelling and clinical and finance partnership to implement, measure and sustain change.
Afternoon Networking
Got a great question? Ask it during the session for a chance to win a voucher for the best audience question.
NHS Deep Dive - Extending Emergency Care Beyond the Front Door: Building an EEMAC Model for Same-Day Flow
Speakers:
- Helen Rees | Director of Operations, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust
- Thomas Ladlow | Head Nurse, Urgent & Emergency Care, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust
Session Overview:
Exploring how extended ambulatory emergency care can support faster assessment, treatment and discharge while reducing avoidable admissions and improving flow through urgent care pathways.
Afternoon Skills Clinic - Enabling Early and Safe Discharge: SDEC, Virtual Wards, UCR and Personal Health Budgets
Session Overview:
This skills clinic will explore how the NHS can strengthen admission avoidance and enable earlier, safer discharge through Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC), Virtual Wards, Urgent Community Response (UCR) services and Personal Health Budgets (PHBs). The session will share practical approaches to reducing avoidable admissions, improving patient flow and supporting personalised care closer to home, including how PHBs can give people greater choice and control over the support they need to leave hospital safely and maintain independence. Delegates will explore key enablers including multidisciplinary working, system integration, personalised care, effective discharge planning, workforce models and data, with practical examples to support the development of integrated pathways that improve patient experience, outcomes and flow across the health and care system
Chair Closing Remarks
The conference chair will now announce the winner of our conference prize draw. Thank you to everyone who visited all stands and scanned their lanyard to enter.
End of Day
Every attendee makes a difference. We’ll donate one tree for every delegate attending the conference to our partners over at Play it Green and £1 to our Charity of the Year, Stockport Without Abuse.
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