LIVES Headquarters

Ratings - Emergency and urgent care

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

We undertook an assessment of LIVES Headquarters on 11 March 2025. We undertook a second assessment visit on 21 July 2025 to enable us to re-rate the service.

This was a risk-based assessment, following breaches of regulation identified at a November 2023 assessment and further whistleblowing concerns raised directly to CQC around poor culture and leadership.

LIVES Headquarters provides medical response to emergency situations across Lincolnshire. All work was allocated through the local NHS ambulance service.

The service had two commissioned services. The Community Emergency Medicine Services (CEMS) which operated from 8 am to 8 pm daily, brings the Emergency Department to the patient, meaning patients could be treated at scene and often avoided having to go to hospital. They also had a Falls Response Unit which responded to calls from 6am to 2am daily. This service helped people after falls and related injuries and was delivered by non-registered health care professionals

The service also had a team of voluntary staff who made up the community first responders and medic responders: Levels 1-4. They logged on from their own homes and travelled in their own vehicles to patients allocated by the local NHS ambulance service. They were split into 24 districts across the county based on their geographical locations. There were different grades (also referred to as levels) of these staff. This ranged from level 1 who were in their mentorship period and had some competencies signed off. Level 2 were community first responders. Level 3 responders had a year's experience and had completed FREC level 3. Level 4 were FREC level 4 trained.

Levels 5-8 were medic responders. From this pool of volunteers there was also a MEDIC50 team which comprised of more highly skilled volunteers who had critical care skills. These have a dedicated vehicle and would only respond in a team of two. Work was allocated based on individual skills and competencies.

From April 2023 to April 2024 the service had 2,737 CEMS call outs, 2,424 falls team call outs and 4,140 community first responder call outs.

The service is registered with CQC for the regulated activity transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely, and treatment of disease, disorder, or injury. The service is also registered for the regulated activity of diagnostic and screening procedures and surgical procedures.

The service has a Registered Manager who has worked at the service since 2016.

We previously carried out an unannounced inspection on 14 November 2023 where we rated the service as requires improvement in safe, effective and well-led key questions. We identified breaches to regulation 17 Good Governance and Regulation 18 Staffing.

We carried out an unannounced assessment on 11 March 2025 to follow up on previous regulatory breaches and in response to information of concern. On that occasion we found that the service had improved in the areas where the breaches had been previously identified. We subsequently re-visited the service in July 2025 to assess the other key questions to enable us to re-rate the service.

People's experience of this service

Feedback from patients was consistently positive. We reviewed feedback surveys relating to CEMS and falls response teams and saw that all patients described the service they received as good or outstanding.