Shingles Eligibility – System Searches

Finding it challenging to identify your practice's eligible patients?

The NHS provides SNOMED codes that support the identification of immunocompetence and severely immunocompromised patients eligible for shingles vaccination under the National Immunisation Programme. However, we understand that this can sometimes be complex for us all to navigate, especially for severely immunocompromised patients where there are over 8,000 different codes indicating patient eligibility.¹

System Searches for Patient Identification

To support the simplification of patient identification, pre-populated system searches compiling SNOMED codes that indicate eligibility for shingles vaccination have been developed and are ready to be simply imported into your electronic health record systems. Detailed in the user guides (specific to EMIS, SystmOne or Vision) are the simple 3 steps to follow to begin reducing your administrative time manually building searches to identify eligible patients and support the protection of eligible patients from shingles.

Please note, results are based on the guidance for NHS England. Guidance regarding the eligibility of severely immunocompromised (IC) individuals is consistent throughout the United Kingdom. There is however some variation in eligibility for older adults who are not severely immunocompromised in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The system searches have been created to identify patients who are eligible for their first dose of shingles vaccination only.