The case for a health system that is proactive, provides personalised care closer to where people live and is embedded in communities – ‘care closer to home’ – has been well established. Our ongoing project, looking at the way forward for health and care, aims to untangle why it’s been so difficult to achieve across the board. So far, we have looked at the literature, spoken to key people, and crunched the numbers. All have provided interesting results, but from my work analysing the numbers, there are three particular questions that we need to work through before we publish our findings early next year.