NHS England has launched a service for people to register with a GP practice online.
It said that more than 900 practices – 14% of the total for England – have already enrolled for the Register with a GP surgery service, which is available through their own websites, the NHS Find a GP service and the NHS App.
It added that over 240,000 online patient registrations have been recorded so far.
The system automatically checks if users live in the catchment area for a practice, then emails their information to a GP in a format compatible with their IT systems. It is fully integrated with NHS Login, matches patients to the NHS numbers, and is said to be fully compatible with translator services.
NHS England said the service has been tested with a wide variety of patient groups, including charities supporting homeless people and asylum seekers, and has been shown to save 15 minutes per registration.
Reducing admin burden
Executive director of platforms Stephen Koch said: “This service reduces the administrative burden for general practice as well as making GP registration even more accessible to the public, offering patients more choice, convenience and consistency.
“We’re pleased to see a growing number of GP practices are coming on board, helping them save time and money. By recently integrating the service with the NHS App, we hope even more GP practices will take advantage of this new digital tool.”
NHS England said there are plans to make the service compatible with a number of robotic process automation solutions, enabling bots to add registration information to GP clinical systems, and that full clinical system integration is planned for next year.
