East Lancashire Medical Services (ELMS) operates as a Social Enterprise and is a registered society under the Co-Operative and Community Benefits Societies Act 2014.  Delivery primary healthcare to local people since 1994, patients are at the heart of all that ELMS do.

Our Vision

ELMS delivers Urgent Primary Care Services 365 days a year.  We have a number of primary health care services whose details can be found by navigating our website.

ELMS is a clinically led membership organisation 

ELMS has over 300 members consisting of our staff, local general practices and GPs who became members of ELMS through their links to the original out of hours GP co-operatives and primary care organisations from which ELMS evolved or more recently in their work for ELMS, and patients.  ELMS members may attend and participate at members meetings, vote in elections to, and stand for election for the Council and take part in the affairs of ELMS as set as in the Society’s rules.  All local GP Practices receive ELMS information and invitations to members meetings.

ELMS is accredited under the Social Enterprise Mark – this reflected ELMS social enterprise status as a not for profit organisation and our community benefit ethos – an area of our Society’s work that we will look to develop in the years to come. 

ELMS is managed on a day-to-day operational basis by an executive team accountable to ELMS Council.  ELMS Council receive reports from the executive team on the business, cause an annual report to be prepared, revenue account and balance sheet as required by these rules and help determine the Society’s strategy and forward plans in consultation with the Executive team and when appropriate to make recommendations for change, including changes to the Society’s rules.

Any comments or feedback will be greatly appreciated, as we are always looking to improve the services we offer.

Click Here to meet the ELMS team. 

Our head office can be found on Accrington Road in Blackburn.

Address:
East Lancashire Medical Services
St Ives House
Accrington Road
Blackburn
Lancashire
BB1 2EG

For satnavs please use postcode BB1 3NY

Tel: 01254 946997

We are open for 09:00am to 17:00pm Monday to Friday for enquiries

ELMS are a Community Benefits Society and as such we take the quality of our service offer very seriously. We welcome feedback from patients and use it as the basis for learning what we have got right and wrong and how we might improve.

The Family and Friends Test is the primary source for patient feedback. In 2023-24 (April 23 to Sept 24), ELMS had a total of 141,167 patient contacts and received 734 responses, 96% of which would be extremely likely or likely to recommend ELMS. Some of the positive comments are as follows:

“Absolutely excellent, best staff ever”

“The doctor who saw me was exceptionally reassuring and showed an outstanding upbeat bedside manner throughout whilst maintaining my confidence through his unflinching knowledge”

“Excellent service and very caring”

“Was seen and assessed promptly. Doctor paid attention to details. Reception staff were friendly, polite & helpful”

Please find below ELMS annual report for 2018-19 to 2022-23

• ELMS Annual Report 2018 - 2019
• ELMS Annual Report 2019 - 2020
• ELMS Annual Report 2020 - 2021
• ELMS Annual Report 2021 - 2022
• ELMS Annual Report 2022 - 2023
• ELMS Annual Report 2023 - 2024

ELMS is registered with the Care Quality Commission(CQC) for the delivery of diagnostic and screening procedures that covers the range of scheduled and unscheduled care services we deliver. 

Care Quality Commission Provider ID - 1-199801603.
See our CQC page here.

The last site inspection was rated as Good.

CQC have conducted remote assessments since 2020. The latest assessment from May 2023 is detailed below:

CQC suspended their routine inspection programme in March 2020 in response to Covid-19 and do not intend to resume it for the immediate future but have continued to use a mix of onsite and off-site monitoring to ensure the public have assurance as to the safety and quality of the care they receive.

CQC carried out a review of the data available to it about St Ives House on 04-05-2023 and found no evidence that they needed to carry out an inspection or reassess their rating at this stage.

This could change at any time if CQC receive new information and they will continue to monitor data about this service.

Please note, this does not amount to an assessment of the rating for this service under section 46 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

ELMS regularly review clinical performer performance, using:

• Clinical Guardian system based on RCGP criteria, to provide formal and informed review of clinicians’ consultations, based on each ELMS clinician’s consultations within its Adastra clinical system. Each month a sample of each clinician’s consultations are audited by trained peer auditors; the percentage applied to each clinician’s consultations is based on the perceived risk associated with that clinician; and 
• ELMS uses a manual audit programme to formally assess consultations recorded in EMIS rather than the Adastra based Clinical Guardian system. The process is based on the same RCGP criteria as that used for Clinical Guardian and reviews are conducted by ELMS Clinical Chair, Medical Lead and/or Nurse Adviser.

Consultations that demonstrate clinical behaviour that is at variance to best practice guidelines, including prescribing that is not in conformity to ELMMB guidelines is flagged for review by ELMS clinical performance review panel.

Feedback, and where necessary training and support are provided for the clinician and any performance issues are discussed at ELMS Clinical Governance meetings and any lessons learnt are shared with the individual clinician and where relevant, with all clinicians on an anonymised basis through ELMS monthly clinical bulletins.

Safeguarding audits take place on a weekly basis, where all cases where a safeguarding concern is highlighted are reviewed by ELMS safeguarding lead and actions are audited for appropriate referral and escalation. Remedial or supplementary action is taken if the audit identifies a need for the same.

ELMS has given the CCGs Medicines Management Teams access to our data to enable proactive analysis and discussion around our prescribing patterns. 

ELMS clinical leads undertake a number of clinical audits whose results are shared with clinical colleagues via ELMS Clinical Newsletter.