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Introduction
This article explains how Ardens resources can support your practice in delivering the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccination programme. By the end of this article, you will understand how to identify eligible patients, manage invitations, record vaccination activity, and monitor RSV uptake using Ardens resources.
Background
The NHS England Guidance for the national Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) programme provides vaccination protection for both infants and older adults.
From 1st September, the following groups are eligible:
Adults aged 75 years old - eligible until their 80th birthday
Adults aged 75 - 79 years old on 31st August 2024 - eligible until their 80th birthday or eligible until 31st August 2026 depending on date of birth
Pregnant women from 28 weeks gestation - eligible until birth
From 1 April 2026, the eligibility criteria has been expanded to include:
All adults aged 80 years and over
All residents in care homes for older adults
How Ardens Can Help
Ardens resources support practices in planning, notifying, delivering, and evaluating vaccination uptake. It includes:
Identify eligible patients
Organise invitations and recalls
Prioritise co-administration opportunities
Record vaccination activity
Monitor uptake and payment activity
⚠️ Please note:
Ardens searches use SNOMED codes, while the Green Book uses clinical definitions
Not all eligibility criteria translate directly into coded data
Business rules for payment may differ from clinical eligibility
Clinical judgement should guide decisions in ambiguous cases
How to Access
Plan
Before sending out any invites, we recommend reviewing the following reports. These will help you to identify your eligible patients and ensure you invite lists are accurate and clinically appropriate.
Cohorts
Use these searches to estimate vaccine needs and plan stock orders. They are not designed for sending invitations. These searches show the total number of patients in each eligible group, regardless of vaccination or declined status.
⚠️ Please note: The guidance states that all pregnant women from 28 weeks pregnant should be offered the vaccination. However, it is not currently possible to accurately search on number of weeks pregnant in SystmOne. As a result, the cohort includes all currently pregnant patients. Clinical teams will need to check gestational age manually to determine eligibility and invite patients accordingly.
Due
These reports focus specifically on patients who are still outstanding for vaccination and have not declined vaccination. There is a search identifying all patients due, with additional searches broken down by each cohort.
Review Before
The Review Before reports help identify records requiring validation prior to invitation activity.
These reports are useful for reviewing and confirming pregnancy coding before invitations are sent.
✉️Notify
These resources help GP practices efficiently manage RSV vaccinations by identifying eligible patients, organising invitations and follow-ups - including special arrangements for care home and housebound patients.
Invites
These reports will provide you with a list of eligible patients who can be sent an invite to arrange vaccination. Invite reports are split between Pregnancy and Routine and grouped by 1st, 2nd and 3rd invitations.
Only the following two RSV-specific invitation codes should be used when sending out invitations:
RSV vaccination invitation letter - 2242701000000103
RSV vaccination invitation SMS text message - 2242691000000103
A patient will be excluded from the invite process only if they have been coded with any of the following:
Administration of RSV vaccination
RSV vaccination contraindicated
RSV vaccination declined
⚠️ Please note: Patients should not be vaccinated before they enter the specified programme age range, or become the specified number of weeks pregnant. Therefore, a patient who reaches their 75th birthday on the 1st December can only be vaccinated from that date, and a patient who is 20 weeks pregnant at the start of the programme should not be vaccinated until she reaches at least 28 weeks of pregnancy.
Visits
Separate visit reports are provided for housebound and care home residents so practices can use the list of patients to support administration outside of the practice.
Invites
Using the reports you can then see information on patients with reasonable adjustments, LD, SMI, Dementia, End of Life, along with contact method and communication preferences.
You can export invite lists to CSV and send messages using Accurx or other third-party platform. Please see this support article for further information on how to do this.
When running the Invite searches, use a relative run date that matches the planned date of your RSV clinic. This helps ensure that patients invited have not yet reached 80 years of age on that specific date. If you are unsure how to use a relative run date, please refer to this support article.
Visits
💉Deliver
To support vaccine delivery and ensure accurate coding, a template and protocol are available for consistent and efficient documentation.
Alert
To alert practice staff to eligibility.
Template
Enables the recording of RSV vaccination, along with consent, contraindication and declines.
Protocol
Allows easy access to record that a vaccine has been given, along with consent, contraindication and declines.
Alert
Double-click on the pink box alert to access a template that allows you to record administration of the vaccine.
Template
Protocol
The 'RSV Vaccination Administration' protocol is manually accessed via the F12 key. Before clinicians can begin using the protocol, you must first ensure it is fully edited with the relevant vaccination details (e.g. batch numbers, expiry dates etc). To edit the protocol, refer to this support article.
Once edited, each clinician will need to add the protocol to their F12 key:
Open a patient record and press F12
Right-click on an available letter or number, then select Add
Search for and select the saved "RSV vaccination administration" protoco
The protocol is now ready for use:
Press F12 and select the "RSV vaccine administration" protocol.
This will launch a consultation window. Update the Consultation Properties screen if required.
A multiple-choice prompt will appear—follow the on-screen prompts to enter the appropriate vaccine information into the patient record.
⚠️ Please note: In order for the RSV vaccination to be correctly included in the CQRS extract, administration of the vaccine must be recorded as GMS.
📈Evaluate
These resources help practices manage and monitor the RSV vaccination programme by tracking uptake, those still due, and an overview of those with contraindication or declined coding.
Review After
The Review after folder highlights potential data issue that could affect payment.
The report 'For review after I ?Consider adding pregnancy code on same day as vaccine' suggests the patient was vaccinated due to being pregnant, however for payment, a pregnancy codes needs to be recorded on the same date as the vaccination.
Administration
This folder enables monitoring uptake, broken down by those recorded in practice and elsewhere. It also identifies those recorded as contraindicated or declined.
Insights
For Ardens Manager subscribers, the Vaccinations dashboard provides a clear visual overview of:
Eligible cohorts
Number of invitations sent
Vaccination uptake rates
This helps you prioritise and target specific patient populations more effectively.
Review After
Administration
❓FAQs
Why do some pregnant patients move back into the 1st invite reports?
This usually occurs when a new pregnancy-related code has been added after the original RSV invite was recorded.
Why should a relative run date be used?
For EMIS practices, using a relative run date helps ensure patients remain eligible on the planned clinic date.
What excludes a patient from the invite workflow?
Patients are excluded if they have:
RSV vaccination recorded
RSV contraindication recorded
RSV decline recorded
🏫Additional Support
To further your understanding of the Ardens resources:
Book training for your GP Practice, PCN or ICB
Contact our Support Team for support in real time