001 CQRS searches
CQRS extracts data from the clinical system to support payment and management of various Enhanced Services. The automation of these monthly reports saved Practices having to construct their own searches, which did not always accurately reflect the specification, to complete manual returns.
CQRS has been running automatic reports for over a decade, but with automation comes the need for Practices to be 100% accurate when carrying out claimable procedures and coding. The CQRS searches reproduced by Primary Care IT have been designed to report the figures that will be shown on CQRS alongside some searches with broader criteria which will show patients who might have been missed. On most indicators it is also possible to use Test Patient feature to work out why patients haven't been picked up.
We recommend planning some time at the beginning of each month to review searches. Every patient flagged in a Missed Activity report represents a small boost to monthly income for work undertaken, and may help to stop a repeating cycle of activity which is not being picked up by CQRS.
What CQRS searches are available?
Primary Care IT has built searches for most of the monthly services. For more information on the search sets, click on the services below.
001 COVID vaccination **NEW FOR 2026**
Please note for vaccination programmes, only the payment indicators have been produced.
Why might a patient be missed from a CQRS report?
There are a number of different reasons why the broader search criteria might pick up a patient who has been missed:
- The patient received the vaccination when they were too young or too old. Each vaccination has a specified age range where patients may receive them. There are often minimum and maximum ages which cannot be ignored, even by a single day.
- The vaccination was given outside of the specified window. Often a second or third vaccination can only be given after a minimum period of time (eg: 28 days after the first vaccination) and there is no allowance for anything given at 27 days.
- The vaccination or code used wasn't part of the Business Rules codelist. The codes for each search are prescriptive; while for many searches there isn't much choice, use of long-standing alternative codes may mean a vaccination is missed from the search. If you are using your own templates to record vaccinations the configured codes or vaccinations may not reflect the current criteria.
- A previous dose code was invalid. Some multiple dose vaccinations depend on previous vaccinations having been recorded using specified codes. Any deviation from the specified codes can prevent subsequent doses from being recognised for payment.
- The patient was deducted before the end of the payment period (usually the end of the month). Some Practices appeal the omission of these patients as they argue the completed activity was undertaken when the patient was registered.
For (1) and (2) it won't be possible to rectify the data to achieve payment, but these examples can be used within the Practice to learn about the missed income and make changes to ensure it doesn't happen in the future.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the 'reporting' searches are as accurate as possible by using the code clusters specified by the business rules. The Missed Activity reports have many additional codes to capture as much related information as possible.
When using the CQRS searches, remember:
- The searches are designed to look at the previous calendar month. The calendar month is configured to move forward on the 25th of each month, giving a short amount of time prior to the end of the claim month to remedy potential missed activity, and approximately 3 weeks of the following month to review and accept officially extracted activity figures.
- Patients must have been registered as patients before the end of the reporting month. This means that patients who left or died can be included.
- Some business rules may specify codes and medication; the PCIT Missed Activity searches only consider vaccinations as the structure of this type of searches cannot realistically take into account a mix of codes and medication.
- Missed Activity searches have been designed to highlight patients who may not have been recognised by the CQRS extract. Every effort has been made to make these searches concise without including unnecessary patients who are already recognised by other indicators. Staff at the Practice are responsible for understanding the requirements for each service indicator, and having the ability to interpret the coded vaccination history on a patient's record to understand why they may not have been included.
The business rules and code cluster lists for Enhanced Services can be found on the NHS Digital website.
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