Guidance on Nursing Home Flags

PCSE provided guidance on nursing home flags to ensure appropriate payment is received. The article is below:

Patients who reside in Nursing Homes, or other Residential Institutions, attract an uplift in Global Sum payments for a GP Practice.

For this uplift to be made successfully, an RI flag must be set on the Patient’s record on PDS (Patient Demographic System), commonly referred to as the Spine.

When a new Patient who resides in a Residential/Nursing Home registers with your practice, or an existing patient moves into a nursing or care home, it is the responsibility of the GP practice to add a Residential Institute (RI) ‘marker’, otherwise referred to as a nursing home flag to the patients record on the Practice’s clinical system. If this is not done the uplift in payment will not be made.

Setting residential institutes on your Practice’s clinical system

Practices should ensure that Residential Institutes are setup correctly in reference data on their clinical system, with any entries for Residential/Nursing Homes allocated the code V0.

If you are unsure how to do this, you should consult any help guides available for your clinical system or contact your clinical system provider support desk.

Setting your clinical system up correctly will ensure that the correct information is transmitted through to Spine for processing when patient records are updated. NHS England and PCSE encourage Practices to complete this activity before the end of the current quarter.

NHS England and PCSE encourage Practices to complete this activity before the end of the current quarter.

RI code FAQs

For more information on Nursing/Residential Institute codes, please see the FAQs below:

Last Updated on 18 February 2025