NHS England have published new guidance for practices to ensure that learning disabilities registers are comprehensive and up-to-date and vulnerable patients are given the opportunity to receive flu vaccines and annual health checks. We encourage all our practices to use this regularly to review their learning disabilities registers to ensure they are up-to-date so that the right patients are being invited to attend vaccinations and clinics.

However, concerns have been raised with NHSE about the significant amount of GP time that it will take to manually update registers to include all of the conditions listed and are pressing NHS England and NHS Digital to commission an automated system as soon as possible. Meanwhile, where a diagnosis of a disability is unclear, GPs should refer for a specialist assessment.