We have had the following advice about the completion of triage forms from the BSA:
A triage claim should only be submitted if, as a result of that triage, no face to face appointment was arranged with the patient within the practice or if a face to face appointment is arranged but the patient fails to attend.
If a face to face appointment is arranged within the practice and the patient attends then all we need is the result of the COVID aspect of that triage recorded on the eventual FP17 (or FP17O) plus any subsequent COVID assessments applicable to that course of treatment. I hope the following examples may help to explain.
- If a triage is carried out for a COVID symptom free patient experiencing pain where the patient was given advice and prescribed some antibiotics but no appointment is arranged then we need the triage claim to be submitted with codes 9602 (advice) and 9605 (prescribed antibiotics) plus the mandatory Patient Group 9610 5 (symptom free) and Primary Reason 9611 1 (Pain). Because there is no appointment there will not be an FP17 raised.
- However, if a triage like the above one is done but the patient does attend for a face to face appointment soon afterwards then we do not want a triage claim sent in, but the FP17 from the face to face appointment would have the Patient’s COVID Status of symptom free recorded as code 9618 with a quantity of 1 to show that just one COVID assessment was carried out. If the patient had to have two appointments for the course of treatment then the second pre-appointment COVID assessment would be recorded (assuming the patient was still symptom free) on the FP17 and code 9618 would have a quantity of 2 against it.
- If, in the above example, an appointment was arranged but the patient failed to turn up at all then the triage claim would need to be submitted as in the first bullet point above but with the Face to Face Appointment – Patient Failed to Attend code 9614 also present.
