IMPROVEMENTS have been made following concerns over the performance of treatment room services in Blackburn with Darwen.

The borough clinical commission group’s governing body will hear an update on performance issues relating to blood tests, treatment of minor injuries, ear syringing, wound care and long-term condition monitoring.

Treatment room services are provided from two main hub sites at Barbara Castle Way and Darwen Health Centre, as well as five facilities at Witton, Audley, Roman Road, St Georges and Little Harwood surgeries.

Since September 2017, Lancashire Care Foundation Trust has been reporting underperformance of activity and GP practices have voiced fears over lengthy waiting times and quality of services.

The treatment room service works closely with GPs, practice nurses, podiatrists and district nurses to provide blood tests, blood pressure monitoring, wound care, and specialist ear care.

A plan was developed to help monitor performance and the Blackburn with Darwen Clinical Commission Group governing body will hear about how the situation has improved at its meeting next week.

A report to go before the governing body states: “Since the development of the improvement plan, the trust has started to offer more specialist ear care clinics and has seen more patients due to redesigning how blood clinics operate.

“This has resulted in the treatment room service improving its overall performance by 4.5 per cent.

“In order to improve activity and deliver the most effective service, the trust is undertaking a review of the district nursing service to identify those procedures that can be delivered in treatment rooms.

“This will enable district nursing teams to discharge appropriate patients to continue their care in treatment room clinics.”

The trust says it will continue to monitor staffing to make sure staff are appropriately trained to deliver services.

And the East Primary Care Neighbourhood will implement a neighbourhood appointment system allowing practices to book into treatment room clinics.

Specialist ear care waiting times have been slashed from six weeks to a fortnight, while the wait for ear syringing has fallen from a four week wait to one week.

Text message reminders for appointments have been introduced in a bid to cut the number of missed appointments but bosses say it is too early to see any impact.

Additional clinics have been introduced for ear syringing, specialist ear care, blood pressure and paediatric blood sessions.

And walk-in clinics for bloods have helped free up phone lines, leading to shorter waits to book appointments and quicker access to treatment room sessions.

The update will be discussed as part of a meeting in Blackburn Central Library on Wednesday next week.