034D Eligible for RSV vaccination searches
Folder 034D (v2.0) sits within 034 Eligibility.
The vaccination programme against Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) went live in September 2024. To support this programme, Primary Care IT produced this folder of searches to support call and recall activities.
The majority of this work relates to older adults (over 75s) as this is the group that primary care is expected to manage alongside patients living in care homes for older adults. The other group of pregnant patients who are at least 28 weeks' gestation should be managed by midwifery services like the pertussis vaccination programme, although primary care is still expected to keep an eye on patients. See Pregnant patients cohort below for more information.
Primary Care IT strongly recommends that this article is understood before the searches are used in your Practice.
Searches in the top level folder are designed to support Practices regularly inviting patients for a RSV vaccination. All searches have been built with the ability to be run on different dates using the Relative Run Date function. This may be helpful for Practices who have not run a recall for several months, and need to invite patients for the first time who may have been eligible for some time.
Primary Care IT successfully lobbied the SNOMED clinical terminology team in Summer 2024 for codes to be created as invitation codes are a fundamental component of an effective recall programme. These were released in late 2024.
Cohorts for RSV vaccination
This folder contains 6 searches representing the cohorts who are eligible to receive an RSV vaccination according to the UKHSA guidance updated in February 2026 . There are no exclusions in this folder for patients declining or vaccinations given, so they should not be used for call/recall purposes
1. Patients who turned 75 in the last 2 months - this cohort provides information on patients who have recently turned 75, it can be run with a relative run date to look ahead and see patients who are due to turn 75 by a future date.
2. Patients age 75 and over - these cohorts are divided into 5 year bands to support with breaking down workload into more manageable groups, especially for the patients aged 80 and over who are eligible from 1st April 2026.
3. Patients living in a care home - this search identifies all patients with relevant PCN DES codes to show they currently live in a care home. It is important to note that not everyone on this search will be eligible for the RSV vaccination as the care home's registration type will affect eligibility.
From 1st April 2026, eligibility to receive an RSV vaccination was expanded to all patients aged 75 and over. This removed the previous upper age limit of 80.
In addition, a new cohort of patients living in a care home for older adults was added, note that this cohort relies on information about the care home which is not recorded within EMIS.
Whilst a SNOMED concept exists, there are no apparent plans for "Requires RSV vaccination" qualifying a patient for the vaccine. This is unlikely to happen in the same way that the equivalent code for shingles was only introduced in September 2023 when eligibility was widened from simply age.
Patients who have been previously invited but have not accepted the offer of a vaccine remain eligible. Practices are contractually required to send a second invitation, although no timeframe is specified and could be a year or more. If a second invitation is desired, a child search could be added which looks at patients of a certain age - keep the age range relatively small to manage supply and demand.
The CQRS Enhanced Service business rules had not been updated to include the 2026 expansion when folder 034D was updated in March 2026. Once these business rules are published, PCIT will review all rules and adjust searches if necessary.
Eligible for RSV vaccination
This section describes searches found in the top level folder.
INVITE | PA-365 Patients over 75 eligible for RSV vaccination
All patients who can be sent an invitation for a RSV vaccination due to being:
- age 75 or older
- no previous record of vaccination
- no contraindication
- not having declined in the last 5 years
- not having been invited at least twice in the last 5 years
This search can be used to generate a list of patients for invitation. Some practices may prefer to use the searches in the Targeted recall folder to customise the invitations.
REVIEW | PA-366) Care Home Residents
This search identifies all care home residents using the PCN DES codes for living in a care home. It does not exclude patients who are contraindicated or already vaccinated as it is designed to provide a list of all care home residents showing latest RSV status to support teams delivering care home vaccinations at scale.
The report REVIEW | Care Home Residents who MAY be eligible for RSV vaccination will list all care home residents registered with the practice and show whether they have any history of RSV vaccination, contraindication or a code indicating the vaccine has been declined. This should be used alongside information about which homes are registered for older adults AND resident lists provided by those homes.
Any patients on the list who do NOT currently live in a CQC registered care/residential/nursing home should be coded as 'lives in own home'. This then aligns with the PCN DES requirements and ensures the patient is picked up in other cohorts if eligible.
This list shows all patients coded as living in a care home, it cannot distinguish between care homes registered for older adults and those registered for other purposes such as younger adults, learning disabilities or mental health. Only patients living in care homes registered for older adults are eligible for the COVID Spring 2026 booster although some patients living in other homes may be eligible for other reasons such as immunosuppression.
To check if a care home is registered for older adults - go to the CQC website to search for the home and look at the Registration Details page for that home. The Service Specialism section will show the types of residents the home is registered to support and whether or not this includes "adults over 65 years". Note many homes have multiple specialisms so it is not always obvious from looking just at the ages of the current residents.
Targeted recall
These searches are available for those practices who wish to send customised invitations for a specific cohort. They can assist with breaking work down into more manageable groups. All of these searches exclude patients who have already declined or received the vaccination and those with a recorded contraindication to the RSV vaccine.
PA-370) Turned 75 in last 2 months for RSV invitation
Patients who have turned 75 in the last 2 months or the 2 months preceding the search date (if using a relative run date). This is designed to support with routine recalls of patients turning 75 in line with the requirements to offer the vaccine to patients once they have had their 75th birthday.
Using a relative run date in the future will also capture patients who are technically not yet eligible (eg: if today is 01/09/2025, set the date to 01/10/2025 to include patients due to turn 75 in the next month). This approach can be used to invite patients just prior to their 75th birthday, allowing time to generate the invitation and book the patient in for an appointment in a couple of weeks - assuming this is a typical lead time for routine vaccination appointments.
It is important that the team are aware if invites are going out to patients prior to their 75th birthday that they need to be booked ON OR AFTER their 75th birthday to be able to claim for the work and be covered by the PGD. Vaccinating patients before they turn 75 is not covered by the specification unless they live in a care home for older adults.
Aged 75 and over
From 1st April 2026, all patients aged 75 and over became eligible. This includes patients who were not previously eligible due to turning 80 before the start of the RSV vaccination programme. For some practices, inviting all outstanding patients aged 80 and over may be a significant piece of work, PCIT have therefore created targeted recalls to break this work into more manageable groups with 5 year bands between 75 and 90 and then patients aged 90 and over.
These searches do not exclude care home patients but the placeholder searches in 034U Utility tools can be added to separate out care home and housebound patients as well as supporting different methods of recall.
In April 2026 practices will need to offer the RSV vaccine to the new cohorts of patients aged 80 and over and those living in care homes for older adults. Practices also offering the Covid vaccination to these cohorts may choose to combine RSV and COVID vaccinations following advice to consider co-administration. See folder 005 for searches to support with combined clinics.
Data Admin
RSV vaccination contraindicated
If patients appear in this search, consider reviewing the patient record to establish when the code was added and if it is appropriate. Patients who have received a vaccination are removed from this search.
RSV vaccination declined in last 5 years
This search lists all patients who have declined an RSV vaccine in the last 5 years. Five years is a period of time chosen by Primary Care IT to "hide" patients from vaccination recall, which reduces workload but offers an opportunity for reminding patients they are still eligible as a patient's perspective may change as their own - or friends' - health needs evolve. Practices should be aware that patients will reappear in the future. to hide a patient from recall for the remainder of their period of eligibility.
Patients who have declined remain eligible for a vaccine with no upper age limit. They will not appear in the "All eligible patients" search in the top level folder. Practices may wish to consider adding a child search with their own threshold for sending a further invitation to those who have declined.
Received RSV vaccination
All patients who have received an RSV vaccination ever.
RSV invitation in last 6 months or 2 in last 5 years
Eligible patients who have been invited for an RSV vaccination in the last 6 months, or have received 2 invitations in the last 5 years. This approach is designed to reduce the burden of sending invitations too close together and not receiving a response. Patients will reappear on an INVITE search 6 months after the first, then once a second invitation has been sent they will not appear for 5 years. Given patients now remain eligible for the rest of their list, it is anticipated that a 75 year old non responder would receive further invitations at 80, and potentially again every five years after that.
Pregnancy
The programme for pregnant patients is designed to protect infants in utero, conferring immunity before they are born to protect their early years. This is expected to be delivered primarily by maternity services, while GP Practices will opportunistically mop up or vaccinate upon request.
Unlike the programme for older adults, patients are eligible to receive an RSV vaccination during every pregnancy. Excluding patients who have declined or previously had a vaccination should not happen.
We have decided to keep pregnant patients separate for the recall programme as search capabilities cannot reliably filter to those patients of at least 28 weeks' gestation who are eligible.
Instead, this folder identifies patients who are pregnant but at any stage. This means some patients may only be 12 weeks along, while others may be 36 weeks or have even delivered. There are a number of challenges to creating an accurate register of pregnant patients:
- Not all patients present at a similar time
- Coding pregnancy might take place as early as 6 weeks, but more likely when the patient starts to see the midwife
- Not everybody adds the code of Estimated date of delivery - this is one of the few codes that can be recorded with a future date!
- Coding for the end of the pregnancy - whether termination, miscarriage, or delivery method - is variable and heavily dependent on when information is sent to the Practice.
The provided report helps to filter the data before entering records. The output shows recent pregnancy codes from the last 9 months; the date of the most recent (coded) Last Menstrual Period; the future date for an Estimated Date of Delivery. Note the additional columns for a previous RSV vaccination and declined vaccination which may also inform whether a patient has recently been offered a jab.
The report could be used to quickly identify who is most likely to be due by sorting the columns.
- Sort by Estimated date of delivery to identify any dates in the next 12 weeks.
- Sort by LMP to identify dates that were at least 32 weeks ago (where no EDD exists)
- Sort by earliest pregnancy to look at older dates (where no EDD or LMP exists)
DISCLAIMER - For the reasons stated above, always review each record prior to inviting a patient for vaccination. It is important that a clinician establishes how many weeks' pregnant the patient is to avoid any wasted invitations or appointments. Use the report to help identify likely candidates for vaccination, then double check the record.
Coding
As of February 2026 the following codes relating to RSV vaccination are available:
| SNOMED | Term |
| 1303503001 | Administration of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine |
| 1853501000000105 | RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccination declined |
| 1853511000000107 | RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccination contraindicated |
2242701000000103 | RSV vaccination invitation letter |
2242691000000103 | RSV vaccination invitation SMS text message |
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