Oldham Integrated Care Centre Arts Project
The Oldham Integrated Care Centre (ICC) is the flagship development for the Oldham Borough. The ICC is a central ‘hub’ for health and wellbeing services bringing together services which have never been offered in one place before in Oldham, enabling people to have access to diagnostic testing and urgent care without having to go to hospital.
Community / user involvement throughout the project was critical for such a significant development to:
- Shape the design to ensure accessibility and a clear patient journey
- Inform the services to be included in the new facility
- Create an inspiring and welcoming environment which supports Oldham local talent and enhances the patient experience.
Informing the Services
Consultation with the community and users originated with the ‘Healthy Futures’ consultation. The original consultation was the basis for a review of services and care pathways across the North East Sector of Greater Manchester.
It is understood that a community’s health depends not only on its health services but also on a wide range of economic, social, psychological and environmental influences. NHS Oldham, supported by Community 1st Oldham, undertook a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) to assess the potential positive and negative health impacts of the ICC to enable the LIFT project to enhance positive health benefits and minimise negative ones, as well as an Equality Impact Assessment to identify the positive and negative impacts in relation to the different equality groups.
As part of this consultation, staff workshops, a community event and a number of individual stakeholder interviews were carried out during 2006.
Participants identified the impacts of the ICC project on individuals and the community and made recommendations to deal with these impacts. The impacts were categorised into: physical environment, social environment, public services and public policy.
The impacts and recommendations were then assessed and implemented wherever possible within the development to ensure that the community receives the services it requires with the least possible negative impact.
The recommendations covered areas such as: transport, parking, access, security, environment, design, facilities, internal environment, services, communication and information.
Patient Experience
‘Our Health, Our Care, Our Say’ places greater emphasis on giving people of all ages a stronger voice in the delivery of health and social care services by involving them in the specific projects to which new buildings provide an opportunity to meet this aim. Engaging young people, particularly in health issues, and providing a practical outlet for their ideas, gives a real opportunity to involve and educate.
The Oldham LIFT Arts for Health programme contributes to:
- Local community ownership and accessibility
- An innovative and high quality environment for the delivery of healthcare and community services
- A health promoting environment
Creative engagement activities involved a series of ongoing projects with students from the visual arts department of The Oldham College. Coordinated by Community 1st Oldham, where Equity Solutions is the private sector LIFT partner and NHS Oldham, the following projects were a great success.
Shaping the Design
The basis of this large primary care facility design was to provide a single point of access to the centre for a wide range of different services and to make this large and complex building easy to use, with a clear and short patient journey.
Acknowledging the importance of the ‘patient journey’, Community 1st Oldham and NHS Oldham developed two unique projects to further enhance the building way-finding strategy:
1. Creative way-finding
The way-finding strategy means that each of the six clinical floors has a unique identity/colour to help patients easily navigate through the building using ‘simplification systems’ – themes, signage, art, photographic images.
The project involved setting a photography competition for Oldham College students, and having the public pick the six winning images at various locations in Oldham throughout the 2008 Festival of Diversity celebrations.
The public were invited on a tour, where the shortlisted photos were displayed in various windows around Oldham town centre. A large exhibition display was also installed in Oldham Library and the Civic Centre, where the public could vote for their favourite image.
There was also a website where the public could vote. In total, over 350 votes were collected.
The photographic project was based on ‘bringing the natural environment into an urban setting’. A theme well aligned with the Council’s regeneration strategy to improve both external and residents’ perception of the Borough.
The winning images were used to create a ‘landscape’ on each floor, resized to cover one wall and giving that floor the unique identity to complement the signage. This helps all patients easily navigate the building and provides a striking focal point.
2. AIME – Accessibility Signage
The NHS Oldham AIME (Accessible Information Made Easy) project grew out of the engagement and consultation work involved with “Healthy Futures”. Public engagement found that people were discouraged to go to hospital as they could not find their way around. The idea is to make way-finding and signage universal in design. People who will benefit from this would be those who:
- Have learning difficulties;
- Have poor literacy skills;
- Have any visual impairment;
- Have a first language other than English.
The AIME signage has been developed through full engagement with patient and accessibility groups and the ICC is the first development in Oldham to pilot this new signage system.
These projects gave the local community an opportunity to be involved in the design and development of the new facility and help to foster a sense of ‘ownership’ of the building now it is complete.
