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Background

GP Connect Appointment users have raised a clinical risk that patients could be booked into the wrong service. This is because multiple services can share the same GP system appointment book. A similar risk posed is that patients could also book into the wrong location where sites have multiple branches.

The reason for this is that the GP Connect Appointments API searches for free slots using one common ODS code applied to all services and locations. All GP connect bookable slots are returned in the search. Some mitigation is in place, as slot and session names are displayed to assist in selecting the correct appointment. However, there is no technical solution in place to prevent the wrong service being booked or to limit the returned search results. 

After much collaboration, it has been agreed to introduce ‘service’ search parameters and filtering into the GP Connect Appointments specification. This will require development for both consumer and provider systems which use the GP Connect Appointments API.

Outline Plan

All Foundation suppliers must be fully compliant against this specification by the effective date.

If a supplier believes that they do not need to meet any of the requirements within this specification, within the requested time-period, then evidence must be provided to the Direct Care APIs programme which demonstrates why this is the case. It will then be reviewed by the programme and a response will be provided back to the supplier.

The aim is to get all provider and consumer system changes released in similar timeframes. We are also confirming with each supplier that their system will be backwards compatible to allow for a short period of time when suppliers may be on different versions.

Summary of Change

This can be found within the specification release notes:

https://developer.nhs.uk/apis/gpconnect-1-2-8/overview_release_notes_1_2_8.html

Full Specification

GP Connect API 1.2.8 release notes | gpconnect (developer.nhs.uk)

Assurance Approach

The assurance approach for provider system changes will be a tailored version of the Common Assurance Process (CAP) which is the agreed assurance approach for GP Connect Provider solutions.

Consumer system changes will follow the SCAL assurance process.

GP Connect API 1.2.8 assurance will comprise of manual and automated functional testing. Non-functional testing will not be required for this specification.

Manual and automated test packs will be provided upon request to the NHS Digital Solution Assurance team once they are complete (estimated completion by end November 2021).