International Business Brilliance Awards 2025 | UK Business of the Year | Gold Award Winner: CHEC

About the Brilliance Awards Winner

In this edition of Behind the Brilliance, we spotlight CHEC, winner of the UK Business of the Year Gold Award at the International Business Brilliance Awards™. Founded by Imran Rahman, MB BS FRCOphth, CHEC has rapidly become one of the UK’s leading providers of community-based healthcare, partnering with the NHS to deliver accessible, high-quality ophthalmology, gastroenterology, ENT, and dermatology services.

The Interview

In this interview, Imran shares the story behind CHEC’s remarkable growth, its innovative hub-and-spoke model, and the team’s commitment to transforming patient care nationwide. In this interview, Imran Rahman shares the story behind CHEC’s growth, the inspiration that sparked its creation, and how the team continues to redefine excellence in community healthcare.

1. Congratulations on winning the Gold Award for UK Business of the Year at the Business Brilliance Awards! Can you share a brief overview of CHEC and the services you provide across the UK?

CHEC works with the NHS to increase patient choice and improve access to exceptional, timely, locally based ophthalmology, gastroenterology, ENT, and dermatology care across the UK. Through our nationwide portfolio of more than 30 hospitals and 90+ community clinics, we offer patients greater flexibility and reduced waiting times, with an average referral-to-treatment time of less than 4 weeks. Across 2023/24, CHEC consulted over 374,000 patients, with 98% feeling satisfied or very satisfied with the treatment they received. 

2. What inspired the creation of CHEC, and how did you identify the need for better access to ophthalmology and gastroenterology care in local communities?

Our history lies in ophthalmology, because that is my own professional specialism. I trained and qualified as an ophthalmic surgeon, specialising in Corneal Transplantation, Cataract and Glaucoma. I held a full-time job with the NHS shortly after leaving university. From 2008, I was employed as a Consultant Ophthalmologist, leading the Cataract and Corneal Transplant units at Blackpool Victoria Hospital. I left the NHS in 2017, having become frustrated by the inability to change processes in the healthcare sector and to improve patient access, quality, and outcomes. I could see waiting lists increasing and understood community care could not only help to improve the well-being and lifestyle of eye health patients but also unlock further capacity for the NHS. I set up CHEC in Preston and we’ve grown exponentially ever since, forging a market-leading position in ophthalmology which has now expanded to cover gastroenterology, ENT and dermatology.

3. Can you explain the unique “hub-and-spoke” model CHEC has developed and how it has improved patient access to care across the UK?

At CHEC, we consult patients through our unique, responsive hub-and-spoke model of hospitals—hubs—and community clinics, which we call spokes. CHEC hubs span the country’s major towns and cities, and each hospital is supported by a minimum of three spokes, placed in more remote locations, in line with where patients say access to NHS treatment is particularly challenging, where social deprivation limits equity of access and where there is evidence of increasing sight-threatening eye disease. Our approach improves access to specialist services in local communities and relieves local waiting lists for outpatient, elective and diagnostic services.

4. What do you think sets CHEC apart from other healthcare providers in the industry, and what has contributed to your growth and success?

NHS care is under immense pressure and scrutiny, with wait times for vital procedures the longest they have ever been since records began. CHEC is an example of how a local business can utilise data, ongoing learnings and patient experience to create a thriving national business, built on purpose and a need for change. Our business model is truly scalable, as evidenced by our swift expansion over the last 12 months, and our service delivery and high-quality outcomes truly change lives. 

We also go beyond the call of duty by offering initiatives such as our Home to Hospital™ transport service, which ensures patients living in hard-to-reach areas, or without access to private or public transport, can still attend their appointments. There’s no minimum pick-up distance, meaning there are no limits to their access to the treatment we provide.

While other community providers could replicate CHEC’s operating model and achieve similar levels of success, in being the first to operate as we do, we act as a benchmark of best practice in the industry.

5. What has been the impact of the “15 Steps Challenge” in enhancing the patient experience, and how has it influenced service design and improvements?

CHEC’s Patient Engagement team introduced the ‘15 Steps Challenge’ across 2022 and 2023. It enables real-time engagement with patients as they experience our clinical services, gathering feedback on the service they received, and taking suggestions for improvements. Patients are given six feedback sections, followed by an ‘overall experience’ barometer where they can share three words to describe their experience. Themes and comments are captured, reflected on, and then added to a structured action plan for continual improvement. This, in turn, plays an active role in future service design. 

6. What does winning the Gold Award for UK Business of the Year mean for you and your team at CHEC?

We’re incredibly proud of the achievement, and I would like to send a personal thank-you to our very talented team, whose hard work and determination have enabled us to reach this position. 

7. How do you define “brilliance” in the context of your work and the services CHEC provides?

Our belief is that high-quality healthcare should be accessible to all. Through our partnership with the NHS and our unique operating model, we’re helping transform the experiences, well-being, and outcomes for patients, truly improving their lives with appointments within a matter of weeks. We class that as ‘brilliance’ and now we want to continue expanding our footprint across England so that no matter where a patient lives, they can access our market-leading service. Patient safety and care are our ultimate priorities, and we have fostered a culture of inclusivity, acceptance, and openness to set new standards of community care that our whole team – and our patients – can be proud of.

8. CHEC has seen impressive growth, including opening new hospitals and community sites. What are some key results and achievements that showcase the success of your expansion?

We’re very good at assessing the needs of a community and adapting our provision within that region to help overcome patient challenges. For example, in Hertfordshire, CHEC mobilised a community clinic at a local GP practice in response to local feedback. The closest CHEC hub to patients from this area previously was CHEC Watford – a 40-minute drive away. Within months of ‘going live’, CHEC saw hundreds of patients at this GP site, with wait times for appointments as short as 2 weeks. Prior to mobilisation, the wait time was over six weeks. 

We’re also forging partnerships with established private healthcare providers to further raise awareness of services in local communities. In Dorset, for example, CHEC has partnered with six local optometry practices where patients are seen for their diagnostic appointments as part of the glaucoma monitoring service. Since April 2023, more than 50,000patients have booked appointments in CHEC’s three Dorset clinics, having been referred by optometrists at the local practices.

In 2023/24, we achieved a 97.83% customer satisfaction rating for ophthalmology, with 99.78% of ophthalmology patients saying they would recommend CHEC’s services to family and friends. This shows we are getting things right, and we’ll continue to work with patients to understand how we can close those narrowest of margins and reach 100% across the board.

We’re also making a significant impact on our people. In recognition of our work as a high-quality local employer, CHEC achieved accreditation under the ‘Investors in People’ framework in 2024 and was named a Great Place to Work for a second consecutive year. Upskilling, education and ongoing training are key to what we see as our responsibility as a healthcare provider, and we recently launched a new CPD cycle and cataract surgery training programme to help achieve that, playing a role in ensuring the industry never suffers a skills shortage.

9. Looking ahead, what are CHEC’s key goals for the future, and how do you plan to continue improving healthcare accessibility and quality in local communities?

We aim to continue increasing the provision of vital healthcare services closer to home – something we know we’re achieving, having added 21 hospitals to our portfolio since 2020. We’re confident the changes we are making are improving the communities we serve, as evidenced by the continual increase in patients seen in settings; between 2021/22 and 2022/23, user numbers increased by 124%. 

In 2025, we plan to launch six hospitals and 25 community sites. Every new hospital CHEC opens will offer equal specialism for both ophthalmology and gastroenterology, and we will use the ongoing learnings from its hub-and-spoke methodology to continue rolling out additional services, including dermatology and ENT. 

To keep driving change, we’ll continue increasing the number of ‘spokes’ to ‘hubs’, adding vital community centres in hard-to-reach areas across the country. Working this way, clinical governance is strengthened, with hospital managers overseeing operations in community clinics to ensure the standard and quality of care are in line with expected CHEC standards – what we see as exceptional and market-leading.

Celebrating Brilliance

From its beginnings in Preston to a nationwide network transforming thousands of lives, CHEC’s journey showcases what happens when compassion meets innovation. The International Brilliance Awards™ is proud to honour CHEC with the Gold Award for UK Business of the Year – a true example of excellence in action.