GP Connect – 111 Direct Booking – Digital PCN HUB Optimisation

111 Direct Booking

In January 2019 NHS England and the BMA General Practitioners Committee in England published a five-year framework for GP Contract reform to implement The NHS Long Term Plan. The agreement sets out the changes in the 19/20 GMS Contract and joint proposals for reform for the four subsequent years.

NHS England and GPC England have agreed that for 2019/20, there should be one practice appointment per day, per 3,000 patients, with a minimum of one appointment per practice per day. The number of appointments required will rise in increments of 3,000 patients. For example, a practice with a list size of 7,500 patients would need to provide a minimum of 2 appointment slots per day, whilst a practice with a list size of 9,000 patients would provide a minimum of 3 appointment slots per day.

This is a core GP contract requirement.

Core Hours

From November the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) will be taking over the provision of the 111 service for Herefordshire & Worcestershire. The clinical system they use is called Adastra and the next version (3.29) will be enabled for GP Connect which will enable appointment booking for registered patients only. Therefore Adastra version 3.29 will only support 111 Direct Booking at General Practice level.

Improved Access

Adastra v3.31 will contain GP Connect capabilities that will enable appointment booking for unregistered patients. Therefore this will support appointment booking at Improved Access hubs where unregistered patients are booked in (before being traced across via the Data Sharing Agreement). This is scheduled to be released in January/early 2020.

Therefore because of the technical capabilities of GP Connect in Adastra the focus is now on direct booking into General Practice – the current target is to enable direct booking by early November, with testing in October.

What is GP Connect?

GP Connect is a NHS Digital project that aims to make information held in GP practice IT systems available right across health and social care, by standardising system integration and simplifying the operating model, using API (Application Program Interface) technology. GP Connect is a service that will allow GP practices and authorised clinical staff to share and view GP practice clinical information and data between IT systems, quickly and efficiently.

The GP Connect programme is supporting the development of products which will enable different systems to communicate so that clinicians in different care settings can:

manage GP appointments with Appointment Management
view a patient’s GP practice record with Access Record: HTML
import or download data on a patient’s medicines and allergies with Access Record: Structured

This will save time for clinicians, and provide better, more convenient care for patients. It will also help meet targets under NHS England’s Improving Access To General Practice programme.

The programme supports Extended Access Providers, will support the creation of Primary Care Networks and the Local Health Care Record Exemplar approaches highlighted in the NHS 10-year plan.

For 111 Direct Booking GP Practices will only be required to enable Appointments within the GP Connect Configuration in EMIS.

Implementation Steps

The diagram below illustrates the implementation steps to enable GP Connect between clinical systems.

SCAL – Supplier Conformance Assessment List, EUOD – End User Organisation Declaration

Stages 1, 2 and 3 above have been completed. As an STP we are now in the stages of completing stages 4 – 9. We are currently working on a Data Sharing Agreement between Practices and NHS 111 (stage 4). This is currently being reviewed by regional Information Governance personnel – once ready, it will be need to be signed by all Practices. The entire end-to-end process will be tested during the second half of October (stages 4 -10) and once the process is signed off, the system will be enabled on November 5^th.

The GP Connect Implementation Guide on the sidebar at the top of this page will give you more information.

Please note that you will not be able to enable GP Connect in EMIS until the DSA has been activated on the Spine (stage 9 above). If you try you will receive the following error:

When Stage 9 is reached GP Practices will be able to enable GP Connect and then set up Appointments slots (sessions) that 111 can book directly into. User Guides on how to do this can be found on the sidebar of the top of this page but support from the CCG IT Lead will also be available to assist and advise.