GP practices in Cornwall and in the Isles of Scilly will be reimbursed £2.50 per child after checking the immunisation status of 1,200 children following an individual’s error, NHS England has said.
According to NHS England, the system recall functionality was ‘inadvertently switched off’ following the passage of records between two different providers of Child Health Information Service (CHIS) systems, meaning some children could have not been recalled for their immunisation appointments.
Children records were transferred from former provider Royal Cornwall Hospital to Health Intelligence in July 2018.
NHS England said that around 65 practices in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly were affected by the issue, which was identified in November 2018.
The issue affected 1,200 children, according to NHS England, which asked the practices to urgently check each child’s immunisation status.
Practices have now completed the work and will be reimbursed £2.50 per child – which NHS England said ‘was determined testing the additional work required with local practice managers’ – following the additional administration time they had to invest to respond to the issue.
A spokesperson from NHS England told Management in Practice that the total cost to the NHS is approximately £3,000.
They said: ‘Payment will be made to the practices when there is evidence the children’s records have been reviewed and updated information has been receipted by the CHIS.
‘NHS England does occasionally remunerate practices for activity outside of core contract work but this is an infrequent occurrence.
‘To safeguard our patient’s data, a root cause analysis has been carried out and additional failsafe standard operating procedures have been built into operational practice. This is especially for handling large volume data transfers, which is very infrequent.’
Health Intelligence and Royal Cornwall Hospital have been approached for comments.
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