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Expanding access to hearing care

NHS Open Space and Hidden Hearing

Home / News & insights / Case studies / Hidden Hearing and NHS Open Space: Expanding access to hearing care

Date

07 March 2025

Hidden Hearing is one of the UK’s largest hearing care specialists. Founded in 1968 as a small, family-run business, Hidden Hearing now has over 75 high street hearing centres and runs more than 260 hearing clinics from other healthcare practices. The company provides expert audiology services, including hearing tests, ear wax removal, and the fitting of advanced hearing aids – and serves a diverse range of patients.

To meet increasing demand and enhance accessibility, Hidden Hearing sought a more efficient way to secure clinical spaces for its services. The team turned to NHS Open Space (Open Space), a flexible booking solution for clinical and non-clinical spaces within NHS properties.

The challenge

Before adopting Open Space, booking clinical rooms close to communities where demand was high for their services was a time-consuming and inefficient process. Hidden Hearing’s team had to manually search for and contact GP surgeries, health centres, and wellness clinics, making countless phone calls and waiting for responses. Often, the search process was frustratingly slow, with only a handful of suitable locations available after extensive effort.

“When one of the premises we were using moved onto Open Space, the Open Space team reached out to give me a tutorial on how to use the platform and I thought ‘this is brilliant!’. It was a breath of fresh air. You could literally search anywhere, find a premise and view it. The amount of phone calls I would normally have to make just to find rooms to rent…”

Deborah Hollman

Regional Visiting Site Coordinator – South, at Hidden Hearing

Additionally, Hidden Hearing needed to optimise its service delivery. Home visits, especially in dense urban areas, were limiting the number of patients seen per day due to travel time. A more structured approach to clinic locations would improve efficiency and allow audiologists to serve more patients in a day.

“We report on where we're doing the most home visits, and it’s in those areas we try and find somewhere to have a clinic. Because, often, the field audiologists can't get to see more than three or four people in a day, because of journey times, traffic, the set up and pack away. Once the audiologist is set up in one of the clinics, they can generally see eight or nine people that day. So, patients are not having to wait as long to be seen, and our audiologists are not driving for half a day, every day.”

Deborah Hollman

Regional Visiting Site Coordinator – South, at Hidden Hearing

The solution

Open Space provided a seamless solution for booking high-quality, clinical-grade rooms in convenient locations. When Hidden Hearing first encountered Open Space, the team were already using a space at Eastney Health Centre, in Southsea, Portsmouth, as it was transitioning onto the platform. This shift allowed them to experience the platform’s intuitive, user-friendly booking system.

Instead of making multiple phone calls and conducting exhaustive searches, Hidden Hearing could now:

  • Instantly search for available clinic spaces in desired locations.
  • Book rooms as needed, with the flexibility to adjust schedules based on demand.
  • Easily manage invoicing and payments through a centralised system.
  • Test new locations without long-term commitments or financial risks.

Through regular communication with the Open Space team, Hidden Hearing could also plan ahead for upcoming property additions and align them with areas of high patient demand.

“It's a really easy-to-use system. The fact that you can book and cancel rooms within a couple of days depending on what you need and what you don't need, is brilliant. The invoicing is always really simple, too. I can easily download invoices for our accounts, so it matches the payments. Everything about it is just very, very easy.”

Deborah Hollman

Regional Visiting Site Coordinator – South, at Hidden Hearing

The results

Adopting Open Space has significantly improved Hidden Hearing’s operational efficiency and service delivery. The benefits include:

  • Increased patient access: By reducing travel time for audiologists, Hidden Hearing has been able to see more patients per day, improving service availability and reducing wait times.
  • Streamlined booking process: The Open Space platform eliminated the need for manual outreach, making it faster and easier to secure suitable clinical rooms.
  • Greater flexibility: Hidden Hearing can trial new locations without the constraints of long-term leases, enabling data-driven decisions on clinic placements and the ability to adapt quickly to demand.
  • Improved cost efficiency: With clear and straightforward invoicing, the business can better manage costs and optimise clinic usage.
  • Stronger collaboration: Ongoing discussions with the Open Space team allow Hidden Hearing to anticipate new opportunities and secure locations that align with patient demand.

“I never have any issues with accounts or bookings or cancellations or anything like that. Every time I do email Customer Services; I pretty much instantly get a response. In my catchups with Darren (Fahy, Open Space Portfolio Manager), he’ll tell me about any new locations that will soon become available. I share this with my team in other regions to see if there’s demand in those areas. We have a good round robin going on.”

Deborah Hollman

Regional Visiting Site Coordinator – South, at Hidden Hearing

As Hidden Hearing continues to expand — providing all appointments and GP referrals free of charge, running life-changing initiatives such as their Give Back Programme, which donates a free set of hearing aids each month, and delivering essential ear care nationwide — Open Space remains a vital part of their strategy, ensuring accessibility and convenience for both patients and clinicians.

“The rooms are always spot on — clinical and clean. The staff that work in the buildings are always really lovely and welcoming. The locations are familiar to patients, they know where they’re going, there’s parking. It’s just easy.”

Deborah Hollman

Regional Visiting Site Coordinator – South, at Hidden Hearing

For healthcare providers looking for an efficient, flexible, and scalable way to secure clinical spaces, Open Space is a game-changer. Hidden Hearing’s experience highlights how the platform not only simplifies operations but also enhances patient care by improving accessibility and efficiency.

As Deborah Hollman from Hidden Hearing puts it:

“It’s a no-brainer. A real life-changer. If I could open a clinic in every Open Space location, I would — it just makes my life so much easier.”

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