September 2025 Update

Welcome to the new practices who’ve joined us and hope you’ve all been able to take a break over the summer.

Major Pathology Changes

From 10 to 12 September, we’re making some significant changes to the pathology module. Key changes:

• Standardising report layouts, flows and functionality for each pathway
• Changing Haematinics to file ALL folates, with a protocol for generating folic acid prescriptions, informing patients and arranging follow up tests. If you’re currently using the haematinics Autoreview rules (and not in pathology lite mode), these will be changed during this time. If you have any concerns about this, we’d recommend turning the rules off on your unit.
• Moving the Pathology pages (e.g. Lipids, BP) to separate templates to speed things up
• Changing Auto-Review rules so that you need to opt in for rules to file abnormal results, i.e. the default will be to only file satisfactory results that don’t need reports to be ran. We generally know already which practices are using the full versions of reports but we’ll ask you to check your settings when these changes have been made.

During this time, Auto-Review rules will still work and most automations will continue to work. The reports will be restructured and re-labelled, so we’d recommend not trying to action these reports while these changes are being made. We hope that the reports will be simpler and more straightforward to use, following these changes.

We’ll go through all of these changes on our webinar on Tue 16 September at 1pm – sign up here - https://bit.ly/WelbyWebinar. It's aimed at practices that are already using the pathology module, and particularly those staff who run the reports and oversee the actions from results. If you’re not yet using pathology but are interested, you’re more than welcome to join if you want to learn more about the module. It will also be recorded and made available for those who can’t make it.

Recall Updates

• Invites for Ring Pessary changes now available – they’re in the folder 3 Other / Section 8
• We’ve made some changes to how the system identifies when patients need to have bloods with their annual review or whether having them taken earlier in the QOF year is sufficient – this should decrease blood tests overall
• We’ve come across an issue with requests for BP after changes in their anti-hypertensive medication. If patients attended for their UE and a BP was also requested for a later date, it’s possible that they may not have received a request to submit a blood pressure. Our medication monitoring checks protocol would have identified these patients if they lacked a BP. Many would have had their BP included with UEs or other monitoring. The issue is resolved, and anyone that hasn’t been invited will now be in the relevant monitoring invite reports.
• Changes to monitoring:
  • Steroid monitoring – HbA1c has been changed to 6m monitoring. Having switched it to 3m, the guidance was updated in June to leave it to clinical judgement (Scenario: Corticosteroids | Management | Corticosteroids - oral | CKS | NICE). We believe 6m is appropriate in most cases, aligning with diabetes monitoring.
  • Olanzapine – 6m monitoring of HbA1c switched to 12m
  • Valsartan – switched to annual monitoring with other ARBs. Only Entresto to have 6m monitoring

Prescribing Updates

• We’ve updated RSV & Shingles eligibility in accordance with changes that came in on Monday
• All our Flu/Covid prompts and protocols for giving flu are up and running. For more info - How can I run my Flu and Covid vaccination campaigns? : Welby Innovate
• If you’ve not told us you’d like to use our flu system yet, please complete this form so we can configure it to work for you - https://forms.office.com/e/GCpLVXuHev

Thanks as ever for all the helpful feedback and suggestions. We’re also keen to improve our systems and make it work better for you all.