Online GP patient auto registration pilot: how it went and national roll-out

NHS England recently finished a pilot with GP practices in England using the TPP system to assess new auto registration functionality through the online service. The new feature can reduce the administrative burden that practices face when processing registrations. 

The pilot was a success, and so in the coming months, NHS England will roll out the auto registration functionality across all TPP practices. It will not be mandatory for practices to opt-in to use the auto registration functionality, but they risk missing the time-saving benefits it provides.  

While adopting this new functionality is not obligatory, practices are reminded that they have to offer patients both online registration and the offline PRF1 form options. 

You can find out more about the results of the pilot and when you can expect to get the functionality in your own systems below.  

The new auto registration functionality integrates the national Register with a GP surgery service with your surgery's clinical systems. This is to save you time when processing new patient registrations. 

Registrations that meet all the following criteria will be automatically added to your systems, instead of you having to manually add them. The criteria for auto registration will apply to those patients who: 

• are aged 18 or older 
• are in your practice catchment area 
• are transferring from another practice in England 
• used NHS login to apply 
• do not have sensitive markers or Special Allocation Scheme (SAS) flags on their records 

Patient registration applications that do not fulfil the above criteria will need to be processed via your standard registration processes. 

Auto registration saves practices' time

Pilot practices have noticed considerable time savings in processing auto registrations in comparison to regular registrations. 

The average time for a practice currently to accept a Personal Demographics Service (PDS) update is 3.06 days. 

For pilot practices using auto registration, the average time to accept a PDS update was 17 minutes, 44 seconds. Registrations were usually completed in less than 1 day. 

Pilot practice feedback has been positive

Pilot practices were asked to complete a weekly diary study to reflect on their experience using the new functionality. 

On a scale of 1-7 (7 being strongly agree), practices scored: 

• 5.7 for satisfaction with the new functionality 
• 4.7 for increase in time to focus on other work 
• 5.2 for reduction in admin burden 

NHS England and TPP will be rolling out the functionality to more TPP practices on a regional basis through late June and into July. You will be notified in SystmOne when the auto registration functionality is available in your region. 

In future, you will be able to turn the auto registration feature on and off in NHS Profile Manager. 

The below table outlines when the auto registration feature will be available in respective NHS ICBs.  

If you want to learn more about the functionality, or you need help with the Register with a GP surgery service, you can: 

• find guidance on the NHS England Resource Hub 
• watch this guidance video from SystmOne about the auto registration pilot 
• find information in SystmOne Help 
• raise a Service Now ticket