Accessibility and Diversity

We use regular patient, carer, professional and stakeholder communication, engagement and feedback to continue delivering a patient centred approach that traverses organisational boundaries, enabling seamless patient care. We have invited patients into our call centres, meeting staff and making their own observations. This approach has generated patient advocates who are knowledgeable about the service and tell others.

Through delivering services across demographically diverse counties, we are aware of language and cultural barriers and how to address them. We are experienced in providing healthcare services to communities where English is not their first spoken language. We provide interpretation services across all of our services, either telephone-based or in our treatment centres. Our NHS 111 Call Handlers and other healthcare professionals will identify a patient’s interpretation needs when they capture demographic data. We then contact Language Line and have a three-way conference phone call, ensuring the caller can give a true account of symptoms. If directly booking patients into another service, any language requirement is clearly flagged on the referral. We proactively recruit colleagues to reflect local communities and demographics of the population.

We recognise the role of Healthwatch as an independent consumer champion for patients. Healthwatch provides us with information about key aspects of their work that presents opportunities for us to engage with vulnerable communities for example, Gypsy, Romany and Traveller communities.

At HUC, respect for our patients is embedded in our company values. We endeavour to make every reasonable appropriate adjustment to ensure our service is accessible for all patients.

If you have any issues accessing this website, please let us know at communications@huc.nhs.uk. Please note that we cannot guarantee the accessibility of third-party websites, documents and multimedia content that we may link to.