Recommendation 2

DHSC and NHS Digital took too long to identify all clinically extremely vulnerable people. Individuals were not formally eligible for the central support of food boxes and medicines delivery offered through the shielding programme until they were on the Shielded Patients List. NHS Digital used national hospital and GP data to identify clinically vulnerable people. However, it took over six weeks for the number of people on the Shielded Patients List to stabilise at 2.2 million people, with 900,000 people added between 18 April and 7 May. The time taken to add people was because of the need to work with GP IT system providers to design, build and gather GP data, which were on different systems to the readily available national data, and then to complete the next necessary step of GPs and hospitals using their clinical judgement to add and remove people from the list. NHS Digital believes that faster access to data in GP records would help. It also suggests that government invest in the digitisation of hospital records, noting that primary care data has been digitised, and is now a richer source of information than hospital data. Recommendation: Within six months, DHSC and NHS Digital should set out a detailed plan on how they will improve access to and join-up NHS data systems to ensure quick and secure access to all patient records.