GP Connect: Appointment Management

The majority of GP practices in England can now use GP Connect: Appointment Management so that organisations can share and manage their appointments to support joined-up patient care. 

GP Connect: Appointment Management for referrals from NHS 111

GP Connect: Appointment Management can be set up to allow appointment bookings and referrals directly from NHS111.  How this is set up will depend on your established practices and procedures and should align with NHS England guidance on the total number of appointments to be made available to NHS111.  All GP systems allow appointments to be shared with individual or multiple organisations. Proprietary booking solutions such as Blackpear, Front Desk, can still be used, but GP Connect must be set up to enable NHS111 referrals with the two systems running in parallel. Potential approaches for sharing appointments and national categorisation are outlined below:

Create a new and separate nominal prioritisation list

You can create a new and separate NHS 111 nominal prioritisation list with appointment slots for all NHS 111 bookings.

This option enables practices to identify any new NHS 111 direct bookings. You can use this option if your practice can allocate a member of staff to manage this list so that all bookings are picked up and processed.

With this option, it is likely that the appointment slots in a prioritisation list would not represent a real-time direct encounter between a health care professional and a patient. If this is the case, appointment slots may be categorised using the most appropriate Care Related Activity Category, further information is available in GPAD Categorisation guidance to support appointment categorisation.

Add dedicated appointment slots into your routine appointment list

You can add dedicated slots for NHS111 direct bookings to your routine appointment list.

These slots should be made available for all of the clinical session so that they remain bookable for NHS111. Appointments should be checked regularly, ideally between each patient, so new referrals are picked up.

This solution may suit small or single-handed practices where it is difficult to maintain and access two appointment schedules. You can use flagging or colour-coding to make these appointments stand out.

These appointment slots will most likely represent real-time encounters between a healthcare professional and a patient, further information is available in GPAD Categorisation guidance to support appointment categorisation.

When to share appointments for NHS 111 direct booking

You should make these slots available at regular intervals until the end of each clinical session so that they remain bookable for NHS111.  Releasing slots 24 to 48 hours in advance will mean NHS 111 can book patients into appointments the following morning when a call is taken overnight. If all appointments which have been released to NHS111 have been taken, the patient will be advised to call their GP Practice.  If this happens regularly, the practice should review the number of appointments released for NHS111 bookings and add more slots.  

Sharing appointments with all NHS 111 organisations

During peak times NHS 111 capacity is managed on a national basis with calls transferred around NHS 111 providers. To ensure patients are directed to the most appropriate service as quickly as possible it’s important that all GP practices in England make appointments available to all NHS 111 providers.

There are 2 options for how to share appointments with NHS111 providers: 

Option 1 – Organisation group configuration.  This requires the creation of a NHS111 specific organisation group with ODS codes entered manually, any amendments require manual intervention.

Option 2 – Organisation type configuration. This setting will ensure appointments are visible to all NHS111 providers without having to add or update ODS codes manually.

The existing configuration of your system will determine which is the most appropriate option for you to use. To discuss which is the most suitable option for you contact your Regional Implementation Team for support, you can contact them via [email protected].

GP users can assign a slot name to the appointments they share via GP Connect: Appointment Management. The entry is free text and will be displayed as entered in your system to the user making the appointment booking on behalf of the patient. The user should be able to understand the purpose of the appointment by reading the slot name. Avoid using the specific name of your local NHS 111 service as this could cause confusion when a patient is being looked after by an NHS 111 service in another area. We suggest you call the slots for NHS 111 'NHS111 Untimed Callback'. Users also have options to assign the mode or channel of the appointment. These can be 'Telephone' or 'In person', for example.

Some 111 providers send SMS text messages to patients to confirm appointment bookings, including GP practice bookings.  To avoid patients receiving incorrect appointment information GP users need to ensure they assign the correct mode or channel of the appointment e.g. ‘Telephone’ or ‘In person’.  Support on how to do this is available via supplier specific guidance.

Directory of service set up for NHS 111 direct booking

The NHS111 IT system searches the DoS using the details of the patient and the assessment outcome. The DoS returns a ranked list of services including information on the service such as opening times, and whether the service accepts bookings via GP Connect. DoS Leads will set up services in the DoS that match specific patient needs returned from an NHS Pathways assessment - DoS Service Configuration

GP Connect: Appointment Management within a primary care network

GP Connect: Appointment Management functionality can be used to offer cross-organisational booking within a Primary Care Network where practices use different GP systems. SystmOne and EMIS Web have inbuilt GP Connect booking functionality and some local configuration is required to set up Primary Care Networks booking. All GP systems allow appointment slots to be shared with individual or multiple organisations. Primary Care Networks appointments will not be visible to NHS111.

Appointment slot naming conventions within a primary care networks or similar

When using GP Connect: Appointment Management for a purpose other than NHS111 - within a Primary Care Networks, for example, users should consider the relevance of the slot name assigned to the shared appointment. Reference should be made to the service being offered and to the practice offering the appointments.  This is especially helpful within a Primary Care Networks where searches often contain responses from multiple sites. An example for a flu clinic might be "FluClinic_practicename_Postcode".

Sharing appointments and setting filters

All systems allow users to apply filters so that GP Connect bookable appointments can be shared with specific organisations.  Careful attention should be paid to filters if practices are using GP Connect Appointment Management for multiple purposes, for example NHS 111 booking and clinic bookings within a Primary Care Network. Users should aware that a result of no filters being set is that appointments could be available to any organisation to book into and could lead to erroneous bookings. Guidance on the use of appointment filters is available from the system supplier.

The GP Connect Appointment Checker Tool is used to view details of GP Connect appointments being shared by any practice with any other organisation.

It is used by practices to check their own appointment set up, via a Clinical Commissioning Group or NHS111 provider to help investigate technical issues.

Users must have an NHS Mail account to access the GP Connect appointment checker.  

The Direct Care API PowerBi Dashboard provides utilisation data relating to appointments that have been booked compared to searches made, along with information relating to utilisation of other GP connect capabilities. The data can be viewed at a national, regional, ICB, PCN and practice level.  If you require access to the dashboard or need more information on how to use it please contact [email protected]. 

Working with GP Connect: Appointment Management in other settings

Sites using non-GP versions of EMIS Web or SystmOne to provide appointments

GP Connect: Appointment Management can be used in different settings to provide appointments for other organisations to book into, such as an extended access hub. This requires additional steps to configure configuration.  We recommend you contact us for further support.

Organisations wanting to book patients into appointments in other services

Systems used to book patients into an appointment in another organisation are called consumers.  These could be NHS111 organisations, extended access hubs, or GP out-of-hours services. These systems can be used to check any appointments a patient has booked, search for an available appointment to book a patient into, booking an appointment, and for appointment cancellations or changes.

A list of approved consumer suppliers is available. EMIS Web, Medicus and SystmOne have embedded the consumer capability in their systems to support booking within a Primary Care Network.

These systems follow a specific assurance approach with elements that are the responsibility of the organisation deploying or planning to use the system. Further information can be found on our consumer onboarding page.

Users of Advanced Adastra

Advanced Adastra is used widely by NHS111. Users should be aware that Adastra stores a cached version of the details of patients who have been seen by the service previously. If the patient has changed personal demographics then the cached version may differ from PDS. This could cause a mismatch and as a result appointment booking via GP Connect will not be possible, to resolve this the user would be required perform a manual PDS synchronisation, and select the most up to date information from PDS .

Appointment slot naming conventions

GP users can assign a slot name to the appointments they share via GP Connect: Appointment Management. Guidance has been issued to GP practices on how to word the slot name associated with an appointment. To avoid patients being booked into inappropriate appointments, users booking appointments via GP Connect: Appointment Management should be made aware to look out for the slot name.

Untimed call back appointments

All appointments shared with NHS 111 by GP's are untimed telephone appointments.  The clinician will prioritise these bookings and call the patient back. The system will display an appointment time. This should not be communicated to the patient.  NHS111 should be made aware of this and should inform the patient that the GP will be in touch within the same working day. 

Cegedim Healthcare Solutions (Vision):

Cegedim Healthcare Solutions (Vision): Appointments set up guidance

Cegedim Healthcare Solutions (Vision): Appointment set up webinar

EMIS (EMISWeb)

EMIS (EMISWeb): GP Connect main menu - requires EMIS Now access

Troubleshooting guide

The Appointment Management support and troubleshooting guide helps ICS, ICB, PCN and GP practice colleagues to support issues related to the GP Connect Appointment Management API.