Practices may wish to use the Arden resources to plan ahead for the forthcoming QOF year. The following support article will offer a checklist of the different areas you may wish to review before the next financial year commences. 

How to Look a Year Ahead to Establish the Number of Expected Annual Reviews

The following video will show you how to use some of the Ardens LTC Recall System searches, for an overview of what the year ahead looks like for patients being recalled for annual reviews. It will show a breakdown by birth month and by condition.

Adding the Reception LTC Recall Protocol

The Ardens LTC Recall protocol has been designed to support reception staff in identifying which conditions the patient is being invited in for. Each individual user will need to update their F12 key with the LTC Recall protocol for that financial year. The following video will show you how to remove the previous version and add the updated protocol.

Please note - the following protocol is only available for Resource Publisher sites. Template Manager sites will be able to download the protocol from the Ardens Portal from April onwards. 

Reviewing a list of Patients with the Recall Arranged Code Applied

Included in the Ardens LTC Recall System is the ability to recall a patient on a month that is not their birth month. To do this, the practices apply a 'Recall Arranged' code to the patient record.

Practice may want to review a list of patients with the recall arranged code applied, to decide if this is still the case for the patient or if the code needs to be removed, to revert the patient back to being called in on their month of birth.

The following video will show how to run the 'Recall Arranged' search and remove the 'Recall Arranged' code if appropriate.

Reapplying the AF Excluder Protocol

Some practices do not routinely recall patients for AF reviews. We have made the following process available for practices that wish to exclude AF from the month of birth recall system, which means the patient will not be invited in for an AF recall and will not be invited in at all if AF is their only condition. Please note this process will need to be done each financial year.

Navigate to the Population Reporting module > Ardens Searches > 1.10 LTC Reviews - LTC Recalls > 2. Detailed Review > 2.06 AF Recall postponed search folder.

Right click on the folder to run the search. Once the search has been run, select the option on the ribbon for Batch Add > Clinical Code. Select the code 'recall postponed' (185556008) and complete the batch add screen.

Please note - the patient will still return in the main recall searches if they have other conditions for which they require a review.

Sending Recall Invitations for the Forthcoming Financial Year

Practices may wish to start sending invitations early for the forthcoming financial year. The following video will show how to set a future date to identify patients to be called in.

Please note - you are able to add a March invitation code date for patients invited in during March for annual reviews due in April, this will then be picked up when the reception team run the Ardens LTC Recall protocol to identify the conditions the patient is being invited in for, BUT it is also important that a invitation code is also added for April for QOF purposes. 

Identifying Patients Not Correctly Registered as Regular Patients

Patients who are not correctly registered may not appear on certain QOF registers, meaning the practices will not be paid for these patients.

To review of list of patients that are not fully registered and require further action, navigate to the Population Reporting module. Select the Ardens Searches > 1.31 Administration - Registration > Action - Registration anomalies folder.

Further information on how to action this list can be found here.

Identifying Patients with Mobile Telephone Numbers Incorrectly Recorded 

To ensure patients are being invited in by SMS correctly for the year ahead, make sure there are no patients with mobile phone numbers recorded in the incorrect field, which will prevent the text messages being sent. 

To review of list of patients with a mobile phone number incorrectly recorded, navigate to the Population Reporting module. Select the Ardens Searches > 1.31 Administration - Registration > Action - Mobile phone number in wrong field folder. 

Further information on this search can be found here.

Accurate Practice Disease Registers for the Year Ahead

Ardens has provided practices with case finder searches to identify patients potentially missing from the practice disease registers. To ensure patients are included on the appropriate disease registers to receive the right care and to be invited in accordingly for annual reviews, we recommend running these searches and actioning the results.

Further information on the Ardens Case Finder Searches can be found here.

Staff Awareness of the Ardens Chronic Disease Templates to Support Data Entry

Ardens provides a number of templates to support staff with accurately recording QOF information. Please ensure you staff are fully aware of how to use the Ardens Chronic Disease Templates and the Multi-Morbidity Templates. 

Do you have staff who prefer not to use templates? Do not worry, the Ardens Data Quality Alerts will identify wrong codes being used and missing requirements for QOF as real-time data is entered!

If you are interested in receiving practice level training provided by Ardens, please contact our Training Booking Team at training@ardens.org.uk. 

If you require any further assistance on any of the above, please contact Ardens support on: support-emis@ardens.org.uk