Promoting equality in healthcare services
As one of the world's largest employers, the NHS has a major role to play in eliminating discrimination and encouraging equality. Carrying out an audit of equality publications is just one way of checking that NHS trusts are doing this.
Audits of equality publications
In spring 2006, we carried out an audit of trusts' websites to see whether or not they had posted up the information they must publish under the amended Race Relations Act 1976.
When we looked at a sample of trusts' websites, what we found suggested that many trusts were not publishing the information required by law. We wrote to all NHS trusts in August 2006 asking them to make sure that they were meeting their legal duties.
A second audit
In spring 2007, we looked at whether trusts had published information required by the Race Relations Act and the amended Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Although we found improvements on the previous year's audit, only 9% of NHS trusts were publishing everything they were required to by law.
NHS trusts must also publish a disability equality scheme outlining how they plan to promote disability equality. Our second audit suggested that just over 81% of trusts were doing this.
Annual health check
From our 2007/08 assessment year onwards, any trust that doesn't publish the legally required information could fail to meet Standard C7e of the Government's core standards for healthcare. This could affect its performance ratings in our annual health check of the NHS.
Press release: 22 November 2007 - Healthcare watchdog to review race equality in NHS trusts
