Primary care bulletin - 17 September 2025

The NHS Patient Charter: You and Your General Practice

Following the letter of 19 August 2025 from NHS England about implementing key changes to the GP Contract in 2025/26, this is a reminder practices must ensure the following actions are completed by 1 October 2025 in line with the updated GP Contract:

Action required: Implementation of GP Contract changes by 1 October 2025

Website Update: “You and Your General Practice”

practices need to add a link to the NHS England “You and Your General Practice” document to the practice website, You and Your General Practice
please refer to NHS England’s published guidance for implementation
NHS North West London ICB have put in place the requisite processes to support patient feedback directly to the ICB via our website and an online form.

online consultation tools

your online consultation tool must be switched on and available for patients throughout core hours (8am – 6.30pm) for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests
consider adding clear guidance on your website and within the tool to help patients use online consultations appropriately
confirmation will be requested from Practices that this is in place
support is available via national webinars and the ICB.

enable GP Connect Access Record

ensure GP Connect Access Record (HTML and Structured) and Update Record are enabled in your clinical system
refer to your system supplier’s guidance for activation.

Two short webinars by Digital Transformation Team at NHSE are on 23 September 2025, 1 - 1.30pm, and 9 October 2025, 1 - 1.30pm, on how to set up, trouble shoot and explain functionality. Invites have been sent to all practices separately.

SMS patient messaging

From April 2025, the SMS allocation was reduced to 30p per patient, as agreed by North West London ICB under a three-year business case. This change has been previously communicated via bulletins, emails, and webinars, and shared with the Local Medical Committee .

Once practices exceed the 30p per patient allocation, they are likely to be charged for additional SMS use.

The July SMS data and SMS GP Practice MoU are attached.

Please can all GP practices read and sign the MoU to confirm that the practice is aware that an SMS recharge payment will be taken once the SMS allocation has been reached. Please send the signed MOU to nhsnwl.digitalfirst@nhs.net. The ICB finance team will review the data on a quarterly basis, any charges will be appear on the GP practice PCSE statement - no payment have been recharged to date. The ICB is aware that some GP practices sent SMS messages out on behalf of their PCN. Therefore, the recharge will be calculated proportionately to the SMS usage across the PCN. The dashboard provides forecasts to help practices plan ahead, including when and by how much they may exceed the allocation.

The dashboard shows usage by GP practices across Accurx and clinical systems, including online consultation providers. It excludes self-funded providers and those not on the same gateway. The dashboard also includes NHS App message volumes.

Historical data shows SMS volumes peak in October, January, and February. We have factored this into the forecast. Last year’s spend is included for reference, informing whether practices exceeded the previous 45p allocation.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact the Digital Transformation and Delivery team via nhsnwl.digitalfirst@nhs.net

NHS Identity Agent login issue

Following recent communications from NHS England, we would like to inform you of an issue affecting the NHS Identity Agent software. This issue may allow a user to inadvertently continue a session initiated by a previous user if the clinical system was not fully logged off.

What You Need to Do

Be vigilant when logging into clinical systems: Always ensure you are logging in as yourself and not continuing from a previous session
Fully log out and close the clinical system when finishing your session. Simply removing your smartcard is not sufficient
Leave your PC on overnight if instructed by IT, as updates may be deployed automatically and require a reboot.

Find out more.

Our Future Health Harrow

Our Future Health, the UK’s largest ever health research programme established in partnership with the NHS and the UK Government, and supported by leading charities and universities. Their aim is to help people live healthier lives for longer through the discovery and testing of more effective approaches to prevention, earlier detection, and treatment of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and dementia.

They are inviting people from all backgrounds across the UK to take part by sharing information about their health and lifestyle through a one-off appointment and online questionnaire. This will help us build one of the most detailed pictures we’ve ever had of the nation’s health.

Find out more about how patients can take part. Please also consider printing out the poster for your notice boards.

RM Partners Cancer GP Bulletin

The latest bulletin focuses on: A bladder campaign, Faecal Immunochemical Testing (FIT) in the Lower Gastrointestinal (GI); and how to utilise the WSIC dashboard to identify unscreened populations.

You can find the Bladder Cancer Same Symptoms Different Story Primary Care Toolkit and the FIT Compliance – July 2025 position document attached.

Updated north west London antimicrobial prescribing guidelines for primary care

Following the July Integrated Medicines Optimisation Committee (IMOC), the updated guidance has been published.

Consultation on amending the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 to support supply and deployment of vaccines

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has launched a public consultation to seek views on proposed amendments to the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. These proposed amendments are based on lessons learned from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically those that would support the safe supply, distribution and administration of vaccines, and apply to a wider range of vaccines than those originally considered during the pandemic. DHSC states that the aim is to enable “a safe, effective and stable vaccination system that is fit for the future”. The consultation is open for 12 weeks and will close at 28 November 2025, 11.59pm. Details of the consultation and access to the online survey are available.

Colleagues might consider responding to the consultation, either as teams or individuals, and raising awareness of the consultation with interested partners.

Autumn/Winter 2025 COVID-19 seasonal vaccination programme information

Eligible cohort, campaign period and how to get vaccinated

Eligible cohorts for a COVID-19 vaccination this winter are;

residents in a care home for older adults
all adults aged 75 years and over
persons aged 6 months and over who are immunosuppressed, as defined in tables 3 and 4 of the COVID-19 chapter of the Green Book.

The COVID-19 programme will run from 1 October 2025 to 31 January 2025. However, the majority of COVID-19 vaccinations should be completed by 19 December 2025.

Patients can now book their vaccination appointment online using the national booking system: Book, change, or cancel a COVID-19 vaccination appointment online - NHS or visit one of our walk-in sites from Wednesday 1 October 2025.

Note: many sites also offer a flu vaccination, so patients are requested to check this with the site

Find out more about walk-in sites and where patients can get vaccinated.

RSV vaccination programme – updated guidance

NHS England has updated the contractual guidance for general practices on the RSV vaccination programme. The revised guidance clarifies eligibility for the older adult catch up programme, specifically that those adults aged 75 to 79 years old on 31 August 2024 will remain eligible until 31 August 2026. Updates have also been made to the RSV clinical coding requirements with both the older adult and pregnancy RSV services now offered in Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) and General Practice Extension Service (GPES) extractions supporting automated payments for those aged 75-79 years old at the point of vaccination.

Please contact the NHS England London Immunisations Team directly with any queries.

Pathology providers in north west London unaffected by Diabetes testing machine errors

North West London Pathology (NWLP), The Doctors Laboratory (TDL) and Berkshire Surrey Pathology Services (BSPS) have all confirmed that they are unaffected by the issue reported on the 5 September 2025 in the BBC report “Error leaves 55,000 diabetes patients needing new tests”. If you have any further questions on this arise please email the ICB diagnostic team.

Education and training