Dear Colleagues,
We are aware that practices have been asked to review their High Risk Searches for Shielded Patients List and that a number of you would have been working on this for the deadline for the work to be done by 5pm today (14 April).
To summarise:
- Updated central searches have now been provided by your clinical system. All of those patients have been sent a central letter.
- Those searches do not include any patients that have self-identified via the government website. You will receive details about these patients later (planned for the end of this week).
- You have been asked to review the updated central searches and if you feel the patient should not be on the Shielded Patients List then you can add either of these codes to the patients record, for example:
Moderate Risk Category for developing complication from COVID-19 infection (if they are eligible for the flu vaccination) or
Low Risk category for developing complication from COVID-19 infection (if they don’t).
If you plan to remove a patient from the shielded risk, the advice is to discuss this and inform the patient beforehand.
- Do NOT delete the High Risk code from the patient's record even if you are adding the low/moderate code.
- If there are patients that you feel SHOULD be on the list but have not yet been identified you can add the code yourself to their record:
High Risk Category for developing complication from COVID-19 infection. (Please stop using the ‘Risk of exposure to communicable disease’, which was only an interim local code) - YOU WILL THEN NEED TO SEND THE SHIELDING LETTER YOURSELF. There is a standard template letter available (provided through CEG) and also letters available in different languages.
If you need shielding letters in different languages, you can find them here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/publication/guidance-and-updates-for-gps-at-risk-patients/ - CEG will be providing further searches that will identify people missing from the central search. DO NOT USE PREVIOUS CEG SEARCHES.
The updated searches will be placed in the Practice Support folder in your clinical system under “Clinical Effectiveness Group”
These searches are INDICATIVE of patients that may have been missed from the initial central search and should be used as a guide and are not meant to be automatic additions to the shielded list.
SO:
- Review list compiled by NHSE
- Add any patients you think are relevant
- Recode patient who you feel should not be on the list.
NHSE have indicated that there will be a central update of the central searches on a weekly basis and that any updates to patient coding will be reflected on a regular basis when the searches are re-run.
There is also a new legal basis that has been approved by NHSE to share the shielded list with organisations in government and social sectors for the purposes to support the shielding support. Further details can be found here:
https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/corporate-information-and-documents/directions-and-data-provision-notices/data-provision-notices-dpns/covid-19-at-risk-patients-data-provision-notice
Thank you.
Osman
Dr Osman Bhatti MBBS FRCGP
GP @ St Andrews Health Centre
CCIO East London Health & Care Partnership
GP VTS Programme Director