TABLE OF CONTENTS


Introduction

Advice and Guidance is a key part of this year's (2025/26) GP Contract changes. This includes a £20 Item of Service fee (IoS) per each 'pre-referral' A&G request. GP practices that have signed up for the enhanced service are required to manually submit claims for payment via CQRS each month. 


It is important to note that only one claim can be made per an episode of care. There is no nationally defined code to use and so many ICBs (and Ardens) recommend using the SNOMED code "Choose and book advice and guidance request -820641000000100".

 

As there is only a single code to use there is a risk that a patient may have this code recorded more than once for each episode of care. For example a GP may record during a telephone conversation with a Consultant, and then the medical secretary might also use it to record a referral letter being sent for the same patient. There will therefore need to be a manual checking process completed before submitting a claim via CQRS.


Ardens has provided resources to help practices record the request details, along with reports and dashboards to assist with claim figures. 


Template

Advice and Guidance requests can be made by telephone, email or referral. If a referral has not been generated, you may wish to consider using the Ardens "Advice and Guidance" template to code and record details of the request. 


All users can access the template in two ways:

  • Pressing F12 and adding the "Advice & Guidance" template to your protocol launcher.
  • Searching for the "Advice & Guidance" template by selecting "Run Template" in a consultation.



If you are an Ardens Pro user, you can also access the template by:

  • Clicking the "Advice & Guidance" option on the document launcher.


This will be made live to all Pro users over the next couple of weeks. If you have any particular requests about this, please contact your ICB Referral Lead or email us at documents@ardens.org.uk. 



Once you have accessed the template, you must ensure you have selected the "Advice & guidance request" tick box, to add the appropriate payment code once the template has been saved.


Clinicians are also advised to document the patient understands the request and that the request has been led by a GP. Both these options are available to select.


Select the relevant advice method (email, telephone or referral) and record whether this is a first or ongoing episode. Please do remember that payment for A+G relates to the first episode only.


Use the Notes and Outcome field to provide further information about the request.


Once complete, Save Template. This will apply the appropriate code back to the patient record.


Report

To access the report on your clinical system to assist with your monthly claims, navigate to the Population Reporting module, followed by Ardens Searches >  5.40 Contracts - CQRS 2025-26 > ACTION - Monthly manual input items > Advice and Guidance. 



Right click on the report to Run. 


This will provide you with the number of advice and guidance requests for last month based on the "Choose and book advice guidance request - 820641000000100" code.


To view details of the patients, View Results of the report.



Remember! only one episode can be claimed per an episode of care.


Dashboard (for Ardens Manager Subscribers) 

For Ardens Manager subscribers, the Advice and Guidance dashboard will allow you to see activity at GP practice, PCN and ICB level.


Login to Ardens Manager


Select the Contracts option, followed by Advice & Guidance ES '25-26'.



This will open the dashboard by default on the Overview tab. 



The Clinical Activity section of the dashboard will display the available reports - broken down by this month, last month and this fiscal year.



The definition of the reports are as follows:

  • Patient Count - this counts the number of patients with the required code, regardless of the number of times the advice and guidance code has been entered. 
  • Activity Count - this counts the number of times the advice and guidance code has been used, regardless if the code has been added multiple times for the patient. 
  • Event Count - this counts the number of events (consultations) that includes the advice and guidance code.


The right side of the reports displays the Achieved column. This column shows the total numbers for each report, assisting you with your manual claim submissions.


To see details of the patients for each of these reports, click on the View button against the required report and select the Patient tab.



 

Note - patient level data can only be accessed at GP practice level. Users must be enabled to see patient level data, access this support article for details on how to do this. 


The standard Ardens Manager features can be used on the dashboard for monitoring trends, benchmarking activities, and breaking down data by demographics and staff activity. For more information on using these features, please access our support articles. 


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