001 CQRS: COVID vaccination
This article assumes the reader has access to CQRS, and can interpret the descriptions of payment indicators.
The COVID vaccination service is new to CQRS for 2026, now primary responsibility for administering seasonal COVID vaccinations has been passed to GPs.
The COVID indicators are extracted automatically from your system approximately 10 days after the end of the monthly reporting period. The searches will return data for the claim month from the 25th of the month, until the 24th of the following month (eg: for activity performed in the month of April, use the searches between 25th April and 24th May). This is intended to provide sufficient time for Practices to check and update their data prior to extraction, and review activity once figures are available to declare on CQRS.
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) |
COV001 | Monthly count of patients aged 6 months and over, who have received a COVID-19 vaccination using the recommended vaccine, given by the GP practice, within the Spring/Summer (April through to June) vaccination period. | 6 months | none |
COV002 | Monthly count of patients aged 6 months and over, who have received a COVID-19 vaccination using the recommended vaccine, given by the GP practice, within the Autumn/Winter (September through to January) vaccination period. | 6 months | none |
COV003 | Monthly count of patients aged 6 months and over, who have received a COVID-19 vaccination using the recommended vaccine, given by the GP practice outside of the COVID-19 seasonal campaign vaccination periods (February, March, July or August). | 6 months | none |
PCIT authored reports
Payment Reports
Primary Care IT has built a set of searches to support the COVID extraction. The main searches closely mirror the business rules, and it is expected that these will forecast the volume of activity recognised for payment by the CQRS count.
Missed Activity
Additional "Missed Activity" searches are provided to highlight additional patients who have not already been counted by the CQRS counts. They are identified by the prefix COVx. Missed Activity searches are NOT built to return a specific service indicator but to capture likely activity based on vaccinations recorded during the month.
There are several reasons why a patient may appear in a "Missed Activity" report instead of a "Payment" report, and these all need to be considered.
- The vaccination was recorded without the GMS qualifier. The business rules require that vaccinations given under GMS should be recorded correctly. Failure to select GMS may lead to the vaccination not being recognised for payment.
- The wrong code was added. Only the code 'Administration of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine' [1156257007] will count towards payment for the Spring 2026 vaccination programme. Other codes that may have been used in previous season will not be picked up in the CQRS achievement and may need to be corrected to ensure the claim is correct. This not expected to be a common issue in SystmOne as the Vaccination module will be used.
- Patient has already been vaccinated this season. If the patient has already had a COVID vaccination recorded for the current vaccination season then it will not be possible to claim for a second vaccination. This usually indicates that a patient has been vaccinated by a 3rd party provider such as a pharmacy or vaccination centre and then also received a vaccination in the practice.
The Missed Activity searches have been built around vaccinations, while the business rules allow for codes OR medication issues. Using vaccinations in SystmOne helps to offer a more precise vaccination history, but some patients may present with a mixed code and vaccination history especially if they were previously registered with a GP surgery using EMIS Web or Vision.
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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