Archived: PELC Out of Hours Service

Updated 22 May 2019

Partnership of East London Cooperatives (PELC) Limited is a not for profit organisation which was formed in 2004 by a group of GPs who wished to share resources to provide quality out of hours GP services for their local communities. The organisation is a certified social enterprise which reinvests all profits into improving services and communities served. There are no shareholders.

PELC provide GP out of hours services in City & Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Havering, Waltham Forest and West Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) areas to approximately 1.1 million patients.

PELC is also commissioned to provide urgent care services for this locality (excluding West Essex). The findings of this inspection report relate only to PELC’s out of hours service.

The opening hours are seven days a week from 6:30pm to 8am and 24 hours at weekends and bank holidays. Patients access the service via the NHS 111 telephone service. Depending on their needs, patients may be seen by a GP at one of the service’s six primary care base locations, receive a telephone consultation or a home visit. The service does not normally accommodate walk in patients.

PELC’s primary care base locations are located at:

King George Hospital

Barley Lane

Goodmayes

Essex IG3 8YB

Queens Hospital

Rom Valley Way

Romford

RM7 0AG

Grays Court

John Parker Close

Dagenham

Essex

RM10 9SR

St Margaret's Hospital

The Plain

Epping

CM16 6TN

Wych Elm Clinic

1a Wych Elm

Harlow

CM20 1QP

Uttlesford

The Community Clinic

58 New Street

Dunmow

Essex

CM6 1BH

The service is staffed by a team of 137 whole time equivalent staff, comprising a chief executive officer, a medical director, a head of governance, drivers, nurses and GPs. The service employs sessional (self-employed contractor) GPs directly and occasionally through agencies.

The service’s head office is located at:

• Third Floor, Becketts House, 2-14 Ilford Hill, Ilford, Essex, IG1 2FA

The provider is registered to provide two regulated activities:

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury;
• Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely.

Updated 22 May 2019

This service is rated as Good overall (Previous inspection 9,10,12 April 2018 – Overall Good rating).

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Partnership of East London Cooperatives Limited (Out of Hours Service) on 14 March 2019. Our inspection included a visit to the service’s King George’s hospital location.

This inspection was to confirm the provider had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 9,10,12 April 2018. At that time the service was rated as good for safe, effective, caring and responsive services and was rated good overall. The service was rated as requires improvement for well led services because governance arrangements did not ensure the Hepatitis B status of doctors was on file or ensure all relevant people were involved in learning from significant events and safety alerts.

This report only covers our findings in relation to those areas where requirements had not previously been met. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Partnership of East London Cooperatives Limited (Out of Hours Service) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-199811091.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services well-led? – Good

At this inspection we found:

• Action had been taken since our last inspection such that there were appropriate governance arrangements for ensuring the Hepatitis B status of all doctors was on file and for ensuring learning from significant events involved all relevant people.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care