The UK health and social care systems are continuously changing over time. Other authors have previously put a strong case for usage of system dynamics (SD) in this area largely because SD address issues of system complexity and identification of feedback loops, resulting in a greater insight into this problem situation. This paper presents research carried out in two areas of SD, firstly the conceptualizing of a problem and secondly the building of a SD model related to the dynamic problem of ‘‘bed blocking’’ in the UK health and social care domain. A case study approach has been applied to a hospital discharge department and elderly wards in a main UK hospital. This paper provides a useful insight into issues that have occurred when conceptualizing and formulating a health and social care SD model. System behavior has been discussed as has the use of causal loop diagrams and stock and flow diagrams. Causal loop diagrams and stocks and flows have shown to play a useful part in overcoming SD difficulties. SD has proved to be a useful method in helping to gain an insight into the dynamics of a health and social care system. This is a preliminary paper, future papers will expand on this to look at policy experiments and sensitivity tests.