Statement made by , Secretary of State for Health and Social
Care
I would like to update the House of an important issue affecting
the NHS's provision of vaccinations.
An issue has been identified in the use of Accurx Batch
Messaging, a system which allows GP practices to send the same
message to a group of patients, via email, NHS App or SMS. In
some cases, when invitations have been sent to patients inviting
them to receive a vaccination, the code for a completed
vaccination was selected on the system, rather than the code for
an invitation. This did not affect patients being invited to
receive a vaccination, but their record on the GP practice system
was updated to incorrectly say that they had received a
vaccination.
This has affected around 57,000 records across 337 GP practices.
Our investigation suggests that this has primarily affected
records in relation to vaccinations for the respiratory syncytial
virus (RSV) vaccination (a maximum of 2% of vaccines
administered) but also some other vaccinations. For anyone to
miss the opportunity to be invited to receive a necessary
vaccination is extremely regrettable, and we are taking steps to
resolve this. There is currently no evidence that anyone has been
harmed as a result. Not everyone whose record has been affected
will have missed out on a vaccination, as an initial vaccination
invitation will have been sent out and a direct invitation is not
the only route to securing a vaccination. We would strongly
encourage anyone eligible to come forward for their vaccinations
when invited, to get vital protection.
Accurx has amended its clinical coding to prevent this happening
again. GP practices affected will review patient records, to make
sure anyone due a vaccination that hasn't received one is offered
one as soon as possible and that records are accurate and up to
date. On average, an affected GP practice will have to review
less than 200 cases and NHS England and Integrated Care Boards
will support them in this process. A detailed root cause analysis
will be carried out to ensure we learn from this and avoid
similar issues in the future.
