001 CQRS: Advice and Guidance searches
This article assumes the reader has access to CQRS, and can interpret the descriptions of payment indicators.
Unlike most other indicators on CQRS which are extracted automatically from your system approximately 10 days after the end of the monthly reporting period, this Advice and Guidance service is a manual claim. Practices should check their data prior to extraction and maximise their income potential. For reviewing data in historic months, the relative run date may be any date in the month following the achievement period (eg: for the achievement period of April, any date in May can be selected).
For more information on identifying eligible patients, refer to this article.
The searches are built in a way which means it is not possible to review data in historic months. Practices may consider storing results for future reference.
Service Indicators
Indicator | Description | Lower age limit | Upper age limit (inclusive) |
AG001 | Monthly count of the number of pre-referral advice and guidance requests by general practice. | None | None |
To date (March 2026), there are no business rules to properly reflect the CQRS count, which is probably due to the complex nature of validating unique advice and guidance requests, and why this particular service requires Practices to submit a manual submission. Primary Care IT has built a set of searches along the same lines as all other CQRS searches with a particular emphasis on checking coding.
PCIT authored reports
Approach
In the absence of published business rules, PCIT has developed searches and reports based on current thinking of how to track A&G requests. A single code has been identified which can be used by members of the team to document A&G requests. Other codes are available to select but this is the only code available nationally across multiple clinical systems.
Unlike other CQRS claim indicators, we strongly recommend using a breakdown on the AG001 report rather than picking up the number of patients. The report will show every Choose and book advice and guidance request code from the previous month which may reveal more than 1 unique A&G request. Remember that duplicate coding of the same request should be disregarded.
Missed Activity
For the Missed Activity searches, other codes suggestive of a conversation with secondary care will be picked up. It may be necessary to interrogate individual records if no descriptive text was added alongside the code. See below for more information.
The claim and Missed Activity searches will only pick up potential Advice and Guidance requests which have been coded. If a clinician speaks to a hospital colleague on the telephone for the purposes of an A&G request but does not use a code, there is no trail to identify that the conversation occurred.
Review the CQRS article for points to consider when using these searches.
The business rules and code cluster lists for enhanced services can be found on the NHS Digital website.
While the main searches have been built to closely mirror the business rules, there is a creative element to the Missed Activity searches. Where patients appear in the Missed Activity searches, don't discount that there are other factors which erroneously brought the patient into the search. PCIT is always happy to hear about problems, but is unable to assist with every query why a specific patient is/isn't included.
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