005U COVID Utility Tools
COVID Utility Tools
This folder contains separate elements which are linked, and may be used as the final step in converting a list of patients for recall into a mass communication. It includes invitation searches which can be added to recall searches if practices wish to identify only those patients who have not had an invitation or who have had a specific number of invitations.
Communication placeholder searches
The CVP-U010 Communication placeholder for recall search is designed to allow you to copy all of the communication searches and reports and add them to the invite search of your choice.
To link the placeholder to a parent search first copy the search to the recall folder. Make sure to include all descendant when prompted so that all of the searches and reports are included. The right click on the placeholder search, select Properties, press the Results from radio button, then use the spyglass to locate the targeted cohort.
Note that care home residents and housebound patients have been excluded from the communications searches to save inviting patients who are already likely to receive their vaccination during a home visit.
Patients with a mobile number
CVP-U011 goes further than simply identifying those patients with an 07 number on their record. Of course it should be stated that only 07 numbers appearing in the mobile number field will be picked up, so any mobile numbers saved in the home telephone number field will not be listed. The searches are also designed to exclude those patients who have declined permission for SMS messaging and these patients are then placed in the 'no mobile number' group.
For those patients with a mobile number, text messaging is the most common tool for sending COVID invitations. PCIT have provided a number of different pre-configured reports depending on the platform used. Practices are welcome to delete the mobile reports which are not relevant. For everybody else a mail shot will probably be the preferred method used for invitation although some practices may also choose to send emails where available.
Please note that some platforms send batch messages into the NHS app for patients with the appropriate settings. This is defined within the communication platform so currently this is not something that needs to be defined in a search.
Patients without a mobile number
CVP-U012 identifies patients who do not appear on CVP-U011, either because they do not have a 07 number in the mobile field on their record or because they have declined consent for SMS messaging. Again this does not include patients who are coded as living in a care home or housebound patients as these are already covered by the reports in 005B.
Patients with an email address
CVP-U013 has been added to identify patients with an email address. Again this report will check that the patient has consented to receive emails from the practice and will exclude care home and housebound patients. This has been added for practices who are looking to reduce SMS costs by sending batch messages to patient email addresses where available.
Practices using the email address search will need to then exclude these patients from their batch SMS messages and any batch letters. Unlike the 'mobile number' and 'no mobile number' searches this search is not designed to automatically exclude patients on the other 2 searches as most practices currently use SMS as their default batch messaging option.
The best way to do this is to send the email messages first and ensure those patients are coded with a COVID invitation code. Then use the invitation placeholder searches (see below) to identify patients who have not yet had a COVID invitation this season and move CVP-U011 so it is based on those patients. At the moment this search only includes reports for two platforms which have been requested but practices are welcome to request additional platforms if they need different information to appear in the CSV file.
Invitation placeholder searches
As above, the CVP-U020 Invitation placeholder itself is simply a search to help join the rest of the searches. These include searches for patients who have not yet received a COVID invitation and those who have received one or two invitations this Spring 2026 season. The Spring 2026 season is defined as 01/03/26-30/06/26 to recognise that many practices start sending flu invitations in March.
Searches looking for one or two invitations will look at invitations sent at least 7 days apart, this is not a requirement of the specification as COVID vaccinations are not included in QOF or IIF incentive schemes but helps to avoid patients appearing to have had 2 or more invitations in error due to duplicate coding.
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