Nearly a quarter of people in the UK have a disability, yet the healthcare system continues to let disabled people down. Kate Stevenson spoke to Dr Hannah Barham-Brown and Disability Rights UK about problems with the NHS and your rights as a disabled person
Accessing quality healthcare as a disabled person is often a challenge. Inequalities in the healthcare system, from physical barriers to social barriers, mean that we often receive poorer care than our non-disabled counterparts.
Yet, on average, people with disabilities will often require more healthcare throughout their lifetime. Depending on the nature of their disability, a disabled person may be in and out of hospital, making it even more important that they receive high quality healthcare.
Dr Hannah Barham-Brown is an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Consultant, as well as a fully qualified GP. She’s using her own experiences as a disabled woman with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome to help influence how our healthcare systems are designed in the future.
“My experiences are slightly different because I’m a GP, which always changes the dynamic,” admits Hannah. “But from my personal experiences, our systems aren’t set up for disabled people.”
ADDRESSING ASSUMPTIONS
Accessing healthcare services from the NHS should be as easy for disabled people as it is for non-disabled individuals. But in Dr Hannah’s experience, this has not always been the case: “Quality healthcare means that, first and foremost, it’s accessible” she affirms. “But can I get a cervical screening? No, because I’m one of a quarter of a million hoist-dependant wheelchair users in the UK, and only 0.1% of surgeries have a suitable hoist.”
Disabled women routinely struggle to access smear tests because medical professionals believe they’re sexually inactive, or because they cannot get into GP surgeries. Campaigners have argued for at-home tests to detect HPV, which are undergoing trials in England, to be made available to disabled women to help reduce inequality.
Dr Hannah confesses that it’s the norm for her fellow medical professionals to hold untrue assumptions about their disabled patients, which she says can adversely affect their treatment: “There’s a tendency to see disabled people as sick people,” she reveals. “It’s time we started seeing disabled people as individual human beings. People who have relationships and – god forbid – have sex.”
STARTING AGAIN
To fix the issues within the NHS, Dr Hannah says we need to address the training our medical staff receive first: “There’s definitely a gap in our training when it comes to disabilities,” she muses. “But there’s also a lot of red tape and systems in place that we have to abide by. It’s easy to feel stuck, and it’s something I’m keen to do more about.”
DISABLED VOICES
Disability Rights UK works closely with disabled people’s organisations to ensure disabled people have all the information they need to exercise their rights, including in healthcare settings. Like Dr Hannah, Laura Horton from the organisation believes that the government needs to involve more disabled people in the planning process when creating new legislation or building new facilities.
She explains: “The NHS needs to ensure that disabled people’s voices are valued and prioritised, particularly in the planning and delivering of healthcare services. We know there are solutions out there, but disabled people continue to die avoidable deaths, and many more have experienced unfair, poor outcomes.”
FINDING SOLUTIONS
The government recently set up integrated care systems (ICS) in a bid to address some of these issues, which Laura says is a step in the right direction. The system brings local partners – the NHS, councils, the voluntary sector, and more – together to help create better services based on local needs. While ICS have reduced some inequalities, disabled people are still disproportionately affected by issues within the UK’s care system.
“In our experience, disabled people want to be heard and valued. They want their concerns to be raised and taken seriously so they can access more services,” maintains Laura. “We’d like the NHS to work more collaboratively with disabled people, so people will feel like their needs will be addressed if they raise a concern.”
CHANGING MINDSETS
Laura believes that an “open door policy” in the NHS could have a positive impact on disabled people’s care plans moving forward: “We need to think more about how we shape our services and the barriers that are in place. Sometimes people feel intimidated around raising any issues they might have about their treatment, and we need to find ways to encourage people to raise any issues as soon as they occur. It’s about changing our mindsets and improving our services too.”
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
Under the Equality Act 2010, it’s against the law for doctors’ practices, dental surgeries, hospitals, and any other healthcare provider to discriminate against a person with a disability who requires treatment. If you think you’ve been discriminated against under the Equality Act, or have had your rights violated, there are protections in place. Contact Disability Rights UK for advice on what to do next. Dr Hannah
Follow Dr Hannah on Instagram @DrHannahBarhamBrown or visit her website for more information.