As the head of women’s services for HCA Healthcare UK, Dr Orlanda Allen is at the forefront of women’s healthcare provision in Harley Street. She’s been the driving force behind the arrival of the company’s new £13.5m Women’s Health Centre, a state-of-the-art outpatient centre that opened last August. “I feel very fortunate to be in the role,” says Dr Allen. “Every day there’s a new challenge and there are lots of problems to solve, but it’s been so exciting.”
Dr Allen trained and worked in the NHS as an anaesthetist, then ran a private aesthetics clinic before
moving to HCA, where she worked as an anaesthetist in intensive care and also managed the resident doctor service at The Harley Street Clinic. She then undertook further training that focused specifically on women’s health issues.
“I did a management degree in medical leadership, and I’ve just finished an MBA in health at UCL Global Business School for Health,” she explains, “and as part of that, I did a primary research project on women’s health and the gender health gap and how you can design services strategically to better serve
women. That’s what really sparked my interest.”
Moving away from hands-on patient care hasn’t dimmed Dr Allen’s desire to help. “Moving from clinical practice to managerial, that passion for helping people is still very much there,” she says. “But on the managerial side, you can help on a greater scale. Some of what we’re doing is really shifting the dial for women, and it’s just a privilege to be part of it.”
HCA’s investment in women’s health provision comes after the government published its Women’s Health Strategy for England policy paper in 2022. “That was a real driver for us, focusing on the gender health gap and seeing how, as a business, we can start to close that gap,” says Dr Allen. “We’re investing in women’s services to improve their access to care and their experience of care as well as their outcomes.”
Statistics confirm it’s a much-needed approach. “We keep our fingers on the pulse of external news and what’s going on in the healthcare landscape,” she says. “It’s a very important part of healthcare that’s had underinvestment as a nation and globally, even. We wanted to invest in that by creating centres with the innovative care model designed to really push the agenda forward for women’s health and demonstrate that we can provide excellent quality care for women.”
Current data shows that women are living longer on average, but in poorer health, supporting the conclusion that their healthcare needs are not being met. “On a population level, there’s a real lack of research into conditions that affect women differently from men,” explains Dr Allen. “The most current
issue to mention is probably cardiac care. A lot of women are misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed when having a heart attack, and that’s because they don’t present as a typical male would present with symptoms. It’s not crushing chest pain or left arm pain; it might be a bit of indigestion, fatigue, shortness of breath.” Also under-researched are conditions that affect women disproportionately, such as autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
A lack of education about women’s health issues causes untold distress, Dr Allen adds. “Another issue that people have been hearing about lately is endometriosis taking seven to 10 years to be diagnosed. Women feel they’re not heard so are being dismissed by a doctor, perhaps because the doctor doesn’t understand their symptoms or understand what the woman is presenting with.” It’s a global problem that
needs addressing. “There’s a big knowledge gap among women themselves as well as practitioners and the healthcare industry. I think we need more education in that space.”
The new HCA Women’s Health Centre is doing its bit to redress the balance by following the model of a women’s health hub, a concept championed by Professor Dame Lesley Regan, appointed the UK’s women’s Health Ambassador in The centre contains a rapid-access triple assessment clinic, a full range of gynaecology and urogynaecology services, including oncology, plus fertility and reproductive medicine and menopause services. “It’s a very holistic approach to women’s health that isn’t really in evidence much, certainly in the NHS,” says Dr Allen. “We also have supportive services for women such as psychology and onward referral to physiotherapy and dietitians and the encompassing aspects of care that you might need to feel better.”
The centre, built over six floors, contains a full suite of imaging services including ultrasounds, mammography machines, an MRI scanner and a DEXA scanner. Primary care clinicians coordinate care within the centre, providing seamless care pathways. “So, say a patient has a mammogram that day and the medics see something,” begins Dr Allen. “The patient can then go into the one-stop breast clinic referral pathway, which means getting a biopsy on the same day and leaving the clinic either reassured or
knowing that there’s something more significant there. It saves her time because she can do the consultant appointment and diagnostics all in one go and get reassurance most of the time as well.”
Similarly, multiple gynaecological services offered on site obviate the need for repeat appointments and referrals. “If you were a woman that needed to have a colposcopy (removal of cells from the cervix) because you’d had an abnormal smear or a hysteroscopy to look inside the womb, you can usually have that as part of your appointment on the same day for the convenience factor,” says Dr Allen. Patients whose procedures require anaesthesia are referred to hospital.
Harley Street was chosen as the centre’s location because of the area’s pre-eminence as a district for private healthcare provision, as well as for its proximity to HCA’s other medical establishments. ‘We’re building a network so we can get women to the right service at the right time. We’ve got HCA’s
Harley Street Clinic literally two minutes’ walk down the road,” she says, referring to HCA’s acute care hospital specialising in oncology, cardiology and neurosciences.
“Within that network as well we’ve got The Princess Grace Hospital, which has a robotic gynaecology surgery and does breast surgery, too. And also in the W1 postcode we’ve got the Portland Hospital, which is the flagship women and children’s hospital and serves a very important part of the women’s health journey as well. We have a fertility treatment centre and the obstetric centre there. In other words, we have care within that postcode for each part of a woman’s life.”
Dr Allen spends any spare time reading up on women’s healthcare, as well as consulting female patients, to ensure that HCA is in the vanguard of providers. “It’s the nature of my personality that I’m always reading about what the next step should be, where we should be going next, horizon‑scanning,” she says. “I really enjoying learning about innovation and technology and how we can bring that to women’s health.”
“It’s collaboration that is going to move the dial on women’s health,” she continues. “That’s the key thing if we want to increase research about female-specific conditions and understand them better. I feel this signifies HCA’s commitment to improving outcomes and experiences for women when using the healthcare service. It’s exciting to be part of it.”
HCA Healthcare UK Women’s Health Centre
27-29 Harley Street
London W1G 9QP
020 7034 5175
hcahealthcare.co.uk
