What's New?

We are now automatically importing Influenza vaccination data recorded in the national vaccination system, into patient records in Vision 3.

A new Seasonal Flu Vaccination pathway is now available and will be distributed to your practice via Vision+. This allows you to run your Flu call and recall reports, generate letters and text eligible patients directly from Vision+.

From the 2nd November we began daily imports of seasonal influenza vaccination data recorded in external systems. This is being written back to your patient records on a daily basis.

You may have still received Pinnacle and Sonar PDF data via emails after this date while we monitored the import and confirmed it is working correctly. These emails have now been switched off, and are replaced by the daily imports.

Important Information about the Historical and Daily Import of Influenza Vaccination Data

We are now automatically importing data received from external vaccination systems into patient records in Vision 3, however we are currently not able to import all influenza vaccination data into Vision 3. We are working to resolve this issue and ask you to check with the patient regarding their vaccination status if required.

Once the issue is resolved and all data is being imported automatically into Vision 3 from external vaccination systems, please allow up to 36 hours for the data to be written back to your patient records from when the vaccination data is recorded in the external vaccination system.

Adverse Reaction Data for Influenza Vaccinations

Adverse Reaction data is not included in the import. If you are manually adding Adverse Reaction data, please ensure to add this as a coded entry and not as part of the Comments box within a vaccination, as this may be removed by the automatic import of vaccination data.

Preventing duplication of Influenza Vaccination Records

On Import, Vision 3 checks whether a vaccination is already recorded, and replaces influenza vaccination records with the same code / immunisation type administered within three months of the vaccine date to avoid duplicated data.

Importing Historical Influenza Vaccination Data

Data recorded in external systems from the 1st September to the 31st October (inclusive) will be imported and written back to your patient's records on the 1st November. This excludes data from Pinnacle and Sonar recorded during this date range. This decision was made so not to overwrite any influenza vaccination data already recorded that may contain important information (relating to claims for payment) in the comments.

NHS Digital Daily Influenza Import

Data recorded from the 1st November in external systems including Pinnacle and Sonar will be imported from the 2nd November onwards.

NHS Digital Daily Influenza Extract - Coming soon

To support the 2021-22 Influenza campaign, a daily extract of all Influenza vaccination data is sent to NHS Digital, including Immediately Necessary Treatment patient data. This is to ensure the flow of data to the patient's Registered GP. The first extract will be backdated to include all data recorded at your practice from the 1st September 2021. We expect this to start soon, and we will update you here with a confirmation date.

NHS Digital Daily Influenza Import - Coming soon

We are currently working with NHS Digital on an import collating all Influenza vaccination data recorded outside of General Practice including Immediately Necessary Treatment patient data.

We have also agreed to include all data currently being sent to you via PDF from Pinnacle and Sonar. This will mean you are no longer required to input the data manually from a PDF file.

Recording Influenza vaccinations in Practice

There have been some changes introduced in England with regards to recording vaccinations. These changes affect the following areas:

• Recording Influenza vaccinations for Specific Unregistered Patients in Practice
• Pregnant Patients
• Payment for Practices - Reminder

Recording Influenza vaccinations for Specific Unregistered Patients in Practice

For the first time the Seasonal Influenza Vaccination Programme Enhanced Service Specification 2021/22 enables practices to administer an Influenza vaccination to the following unregistered patients:

• Front-line health and social care staff employed by a registered residential care or nursing home, or a voluntary managed hospice provider.

• Those living in either:

  • Long-stay facilities

  • Nursing homes

  • Other long-stay health or social care facilities

• Housebound patients.

To record the influenza vaccination:

1. From the Vision 3 front screen, select Registration and then register the patient as an Immediately Necessary Treatment patient.

   See Adding an Immediately Necessary Treatment Patient for details if required.
   Note - The Immediately Necessary Treatment registration status is simply being used for administrative purposes to create a patient record for the Influenza vaccination only. This does not obligate your practice to provide immediately necessary treatment to patients not registered with the practice that they are administering an Influenza vaccination to.
   

2. Record the vaccination in the usual way.

   See Delivering the Vaccine for more information.

Qualifying vaccinations recorded for Immediately Necessary Treatment patients are extracted via a one-off end of season GPES extraction and payments are made within the financial year.

For practices using Vision 3 the record of the vaccination is automatically transferred to the patient’s registered GP practice via NHS Digital’s Data Processing Service.

For practices using Vision Anywhere mobile where patients have been registered via Vision 3, you can record Influenza vaccinations as this information is then written back to your Vision 3 system and will be included in your claims.

Pregnant Patients

Where an Influenza vaccination is administered because a patient is pregnant, you must provide a clinical indication of pregnancy, for example a Read code of 62…00 Patient pregnant within the last 9 months.

Payment for Practices - Reminder

To ensure payment is made correctly and in a timely manner, the correct clinical terms must be recorded.

Please Note:

Patient records that are not marked as ‘In Practice’ or ‘In this practice’ are not included for payment. The following clinical terms are included in the GPES extraction, however they are also not included for payment as they indicate an out of practice vaccination:

• Influenza OHP codes.

• Influenza Pharmacist codes.