National Enrolment Service (NES) - Update 23

National Enrolment Service (NES) - Update 23

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National Enrolment Service (NES) - Update 23

In this Update:

  • Enrolment data remediation
  • Practice uptake
  • Support documents and reminder about practice change process
  • Enrolment expiry service re-enablement
  • Statement from Audit and Compliance about enrolment date differences
  • Note on shared email and mobile details for the patient experience survey

1.Enrolment Data Remediation

The currentCapitation Based Funding (CBF) payment round is in process and this will give the Ministry the chance to compare PHO register enrolment data against NES enrolment data for the first time in 2018. This will give an indication of progress against the accuracy targets set by the PHO Services Agreement Amendment Protocol group (PSAAP).

Following the current CBF process the Ministry will provide data to PHO data management providers so they can produce the next set of enrolment exception reports. Given the large amount of work done in this area during December – February we are anticipating a significant reduction in the number of enrolment discrepancies between local data and NES. The task for the coming quarter should be smaller as a result.

Practices have fed back to their PHOs that the lists of quintile and ethnicity differences represent the largest burden in the data remediation process, and some practices have been struggling to get through this aspect of the work. The Ministry has undertaken to investigate options around how this can best be managed, so our advice to practices at this point is to focus on correcting the enrolment differences between CBF registers and NES as the priority action. In other words:

  1. Enrolments in CBF not NES (this shows NHIs in PHO Registers but not in NES)
  2. Enrolments in NES not CBF (this shows NHIs in NES but not in PHO Registers)
  3. Quintile mismatches (address differences between PHO Registers and NES)
  4. Ethnicity mismatches (ethnicity differences between PHO Registers and NES)

Practices should continue to correct ethnicity and quintile differences as time and resources allow. Any corrections in these areas improve the overall quality of NHI data.

The remediation process will be required until the difference between the two enrolment data sources is within an acceptable margin of error for PSAAP to make a decision on. Once the targets have been reached they need to be maintained for two successive quarters, so it is important that the remediation work continues and that practices are following best practice when enrolling patients in NES.

2.Practice uptake

Uptake of NES has reached 98% nationally. At the date of this Update there are only 18 practices across six PHOs remaining to go live on the service. These practices have specific technical or business circumstances causing the delay in enabling the service.

The Ministry is continuing to work with those practice’s PHOs and PMS vendors to ensure a full uptake of the service prior to NES being accepted as business as usual for CBF payments.

3.Support documents and reminder about practice changes

As practices work through their remediation reports they are likely to encounter patient identity issues. Support documents for practices working with identity issues can be found on the NES Rollout and Support page of the Ministry’s website:

Training of front line staff is available on all PMS vendor websites. The links below go to the support pages for PMS products currently integrating NES:

Best Practice:

Intrahealth:

Medtech

Specific documents on enrolment and re-enrolment processes:

My Practice:

Please ensure that practice managers are aware of this material and that they share it with their front line staff.

If the ownership or structure of practices changes, please emailthe Ministry at so that any identifier/credential requirements or data actions can be confirmed prior to the change. This will allow the correct patient register to be moved within NES when the change occurs.

4.Enrolment expiry service

The enrolment expiry service was re-enabled on 19 March 2018. This is the service that expires enrolments that have reached their three year anniversary with no auditable contact. It has been disabled for the last twelve months, however the Ministry has been running quarterly expiries through the CBF process. Practices will have noticed a small number of notifications from NES on the day the service is re-enabled expiring the enrolments of those patients. Depending on the individual set up in the practice, those notifications will be either automatically processed or left as a task to be checked manually before final expiry. Going forward practices will receive these notifications as appropriate for their enrolled patients.

5.Enrolment date differences between the enrolment form and NES

Situations sometimes arise in which the date on the patient’senrolment form and the date of enrolment in NES differ. This can be caused by delays in the physical return of the form to the practice from the patient. Practices have queried the effect this will have from an audit and compliance point of view.

Audit and Compliance has been briefed on the issue and wants to reassure practices that unless such circumstances have caused practices to incorrectly extend funding outside the three year period, or the wrong practice has been funded, it will not recommend a financial claw back.

Audit and Compliance are aware there may be discrepancies between the NES date and the date the person signed the enrolment form. PHO Enrolment is a nationally consistent process. Audit and Compliance apply the contractual rules to the factual situations they face when conducting audits and investigations. They have issued the following statement to this effect:

Enrolment Audit - Impact of National Enrolment Service (NES)
We understand there is some concern in the primary health sector regarding the impact of the National Enrolment Service (NES) when we audit a GP's enrolment register. Audit and Compliance is aware of the changes and effect NES will have. In particular, we understand NES may cause a mismatch of the PMS enrolment date vs the date the enrolling patient signs their enrolment form. We wish to reassure the sector that Audit and Compliance will take the NES changes and effects into account when conducting our audits.
We also remind the sector that Audit and Compliance make recommendations based on audit findings to DHBs to help manage the risks faced by DHBs. This may include corrective actions as well as recovering funding. What action a DHB decides to take as a result of an audit is at the sole discretion of the DHB.”

6.Patient Experience Survey - Shared email and mobile contacts

While it is best practice to collect individual email addresses for the primary care Patient Experience Survey, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has confirmed that shared email addresses, eg , are acceptable. This is because the email invitation is personally addressed and so it is clear who is being invited to complete the survey. The wording of the email does not disclose recent attendance.

In contrast, mobile numbers that are shared (eg with spouse or work) will not be used for survey invites. These will be identified in NES by removing duplicate mobile contacts from the invitation list. The reason being that the text invite is short and does not include a salutation, so it would not be clear who the invitation is intended for. Additionally, mobile numbers with a text string will also be excluded, eg 021 123 456 wk. This is to avoid sending invitations to shared work phones.

Any questions or concerns please contact

Alastair McLean, Project Manager

DDI 04 8163312

Mob 021514940