Automating Recalls


Automating recalls brings a lot of time savings, cost savings to your surgery and will ensure that patients get contacted within a timely manner for their reviews.

How To Automate "Covers"

You can learn more about saving recalls on to patient profiles here: Patient Profile. If you select the "Automate" checkbox when saving the recall, then the patient will automatically get recalled:

  • BookYourGP will contact the patient three times, spaced out equally betweem the start and end date.
  • BookYourGP will attempt to send a SMS initially. If there is no mobile number on the patient's profile, or if the SMS is not delivered then a letter automatically gets sent. Once the recall gets sent successfully, the recall moves from the "Outstanding" tab to the "Pending" tab.
  • When the patient attends for their recall and the "parameters" selected get read coded into the electronic health record, the recall gets automatically updated and moved to the "Done" tab. This means that the patient won't continue to get recalled once the recall is completed.
  • If the patient does not attend for their recall, BookYourGP will attempt to recall the patient again according to the repeat value. For example, if a repeat value of "3 months" is selected then BookYourGP will repeat the recall in 3 months time. If "never" is selected then BookYourGP will try to contact the patient again in 12 months.

Automating Disease Registers

You can learn more about Recall Settings here: Recall Settings. If you select the "Automate" checkbox for a disease register then the patients will automatically get recalled:

  • BookYourGP will contact the patient three times, spaced out equally betweem the start and end date of the calculated dates as per the recall settings.
  • BookYourGP will attempt to send a SMS initially. If there is no mobile number on the patient's profile, or if the SMS is not delivered then a letter automatically gets sent. Once the recall gets sent successfully, the recall moves from the "Outstanding" tab to the "Pending" tab.
  • When the patient attends for their recall and the "parameters" selected get read coded into the electronic health record, the recall gets automatically updated and moved to the "Done" tab. This means that the patient won't continue to get recalled once the recall is completed.
  • If the patient does not attend for their recall, BookYourGP will attempt to recall the patient again according to the repeat value. For example, if a repeat value of "3 months" is selected then BookYourGP will repeat the recall in 3 months time.

Things To Consider When Automating Recalls


  1. It is not clinically appropriate to automate everything. If something is particularly urgent, you may wish to contact the patient immediately, or ask your administrative team to contact the patient.

  2. You may find that certain diseases have been overlooked for a long time by your surgery. We have found, for example, that Atrial Fibrillation review codes very rarely get entered into patient records. The reason behind this seems to be due to QOF and the fact that QOF does not mandate an annual Atrial Fibrillation review (but rather, mandates an annual CHADS2VASC score). If you have left Atrial Fibrillation as "SYNC" (more information about SYNC / NO SYNC can be found here: Recall Settings), you may find that patients with Atrial Fibrillation have all their recall dates set to October 2018 (which is the default earliest date for a recall on BookYourGP, if no reviews have ever been done).

  3. If your surgery has been too strict with the "parameters" selected for a disease register then you may find it difficult to cope with the work generated for your surgery. For example, if you have selected that every Hypertensive patient should have a Urine ACR, or that ten checks need to be done for all SMI patients (Alcohol intake, BP, Glucose, Illicit Substance Misuse Code, Medication Review Code, Mental Health Review Code, Nutrition Status, Smoking Status, Lipid Profile, Weight) then:

    • It is likely that a lot of your patients have not had these checks for a long time, so you will create a large backlog of patients to review.

    • It is very possible that your team members will miss a parameter during the review appointment, resulting in the patient being continued to be recalled to the surgery. If the required parameters haven't been completed to change the recall from "Outstanding" / "Pending" to "Done" a new recall date won't be generated and the patient will continue to get recalled for a review which has already taken place, albeit incompletely.

  4. We would encourage surgeries to carrry out a quick review of Disease Registers which are going to be automated. A lot of the time patients who have monitoring carried out by the hospital for their diseases and medications appear to not have had a review in a long time (as the defined parameters in the recall settings won't be found in the patient record). If patients do not require to be recalled for their checks or it is clinically inappropriate to do so, then these patients should have their disease recall "exempted" on their patient profile. You can learn more about exempting recalls here: Exempting Recalls.