From 2 October 2017, NHS England is introducing a new GMS1 form which includes the supplementary questions for patients not ordinarily resident in the UK. NHS England will deliver an initial stock of the new GMS1 form to your practice in September and additional stock of the new form will be available to order in the usual way on the PCSE portal from October. Previous versions of the form should be disposed of once the new stock has arrived
The new questions will relate to the 2017/18 Core contract requirement where ‘GP practices will be involved in identifying patients who may need to pay for NHS care when they register with the practice’. This will require patients to self-declare that they hold either a non-UK issued EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) or a S1 form. For these patients, practices will be required to manually record that the patient holds either a non-UK issued EHIC or a S1 form in the patient’s medical record and then send the form and supplementary questions to NHS Digital (for non-UK issued EHIC cards) or the Overseas Healthcare Team (for S1 forms) via email or post. Practices will be provided with hardcopy patient leaflets which will explain the rules and entitlements for overseas patients accessing the NHS in England.
Under this system, the patient’s country of origin will be charged where relevant. Patients themselves will not be charged.
You could code within the record for patients who hold a card upon registration:
Version 2 (EMIS, Vision, Microtest)
Holds European Health Insurance Card 9Ny
CTv3 (SystmOne)
Holds European Health Insurance Card Xaasn
SNOMED CT (Implementation due 2018)
Holds European Health Insurance Card (finding) 896271000000104
Make sure you update any alerts, protocols or templates used as part of the registration process and make sure all your staff are aware of the new requirements for patients from overseas.