EMED is launching a new accessibility and neurodiversity pilot in Surrey as part of its wider commitment to reducing health inequalities and ensuring patient voices remain at the heart of service improvement.
The pilot will explore how healthcare transport services can become more accessible, inclusive and easier to navigate for people with a wide range of communication, sensory and accessibility needs.
Rather than focusing on assumptions, the project will be shaped by lived experience, patient feedback and stakeholder insight, helping EMED better understand the barriers people face when accessing services and information.
The work aligns closely with a number of strategic priorities, including the NHS Accessible Information Standard (AIS), Core20PLUS5 and EMED’s Patient Impact Programme, which uses patient feedback, complaints, compliments, stakeholder insight and lived experience to identify opportunities for improvement.
Rachel Southwood, Community Engagement Officer at EMED, said:
“Some of the most valuable improvements come from listening carefully to the people who use our services every day.
This project is about understanding people’s experiences, identifying barriers and working together to find practical solutions that make services easier to access and easier to understand.
We know that accessibility is about much more than compliance. It’s about creating services that work for people, recognising that everyone experiences healthcare differently and ensuring that nobody is disadvantaged because of the way information is provided or services are designed.”
Initially focusing on patient communications and experience, the pilot will help EMED gather insight into how information is received, understood and acted upon by patients with a variety of accessibility needs.
As a national provider, EMED is uniquely placed to take learning from local communities and share successful approaches more widely. By piloting new ideas in Surrey, the organisation hopes to develop practical improvements that can be adapted and implemented across multiple contracts.
The project also supports EMED’s wider engagement strategy, which focuses on listening, learning and improving through meaningful engagement with patients, carers, community organisations and healthcare partners.
By combining lived experience with operational insight, EMED aims to ensure that service improvements are informed by the people who know the service best – those who use it.
This pilot is one of several engagement-led programmes underway across EMED, helping the organisation better understand the needs of different patient groups and translate that learning into measurable service improvements.
Further updates will be shared as the pilot develops.
