Using AI Care Navigator to Meet the October 2025 GP Contract Requirements

Managing Urgent Requests Under the New GP Contract Requirements

This guide explains the October 2025 GP contract changes and provides a step-by-step walkthrough of how to use the Patchs AI Care Navigator to meet the new requirements while ensuring patient safety.

• Understanding the October 2025 GP Contract Changes
• How Patchs AI Care Navigator Helps
• How to Set Up Your AI Care Navigator
• What to Expect: Patient & Staff Experience
• Best Practices
• Care Navigator for October Contract - FAQs
• Care Navigator for October Contract - Useful videos
• Further Support

Understanding the October 2025 GP Contract Changes

The new GP contract requirements mandate that "from 1 October 2025 practices will be required to keep their online consultation tool open for the duration of core hours (8am – 6:30pm) for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests."

While this improves patient access, it creates significant safety challenges: urgent requests submitted late in the day may not be reviewed in time, potentially putting patients at risk.

This leaves practices navigating a difficult balance between contractual compliance and clinical safety. We recognise that some practices may already be ready for the GP contract changes, but here's how Patchs offers a flexible, technical solution to help you meet this challenge.

How Patchs AI Care Navigator Helps

Patchs AI Care Navigator, a registered medical device developed with the University of Manchester, automatically identifies urgent requests with the same accuracy as an experienced GP (validated by studies from the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge).

Instead of just flagging urgent cases, Patchs can automatically redirect them to appropriate care pathways during times when your practice cannot safely manage them online. This ensures:

• Contractual compliance by keeping your system open for routine requests.
• Patient safety by preventing urgent cases from sitting unreviewed.
• Staff wellbeing by reducing late-day urgent queries.
• Clear communication through customizable patient messaging.

How to Set Up Your AI Care Navigator

Here is a step-by-step guide to configuring your settings to meet the new contract requirements.

Step 1: Enable the AI Care Navigator

First, you must enable the feature.

1. Navigate to your Feature Settings page.
2. Urgency AI is a pre-requisite for setting the care navigator actions for automatic, urgent request management.
3. If you have at least one of the relevant AI modules enabled, you will see a box to enable the AI Care Navigator.
4. Check the tick-box to enable it. An "AI Care Navigator" tab will appear on your Feature Settings page.

Step 2: Set Up Your Request Limits

To ensure patients can contact your practice online during core hours, you should set your request limits. How you set up the rate limiter is your practice's decision, but here are two common approaches:

• Option 1: Set unlimited for both clinical and non-clinical requests between 08:00 and 18:30.
  
• Option 2: Set unlimited from 08:00 till 18:30 for non-clinical requests, with request windows throughout the day for clinical requests.
  

Important: 30-Minute Submission Time Please remember that limits are checked when a patient starts making their request, and they have up to 30 minutes to submit. This means if a patient starts a request at 18:29, they may not submit it until 18:59. You may want to account for this when setting your limits and messaging.

Step 3: Set Up Consistent Patient Messaging

Clear messaging is essential. We recommend updating two key areas:

1. Update the Login Screen Message You should update your login page message to reflect Patchs availability.

• Go to: Practice Settings page
• Example Wording:
  From 1 October 2025, NON-URGENT requests can be made on Patchs from 8am to 6:30pm. This includes routine appointments (e.g. smear tests, vaccinations, long-term condition reviews), medication queries, and admin tasks. You can submit requests for NON-URGENT appointments via the ‘admin query’ route. You can still use Patchs for URGENT medical problems. This service closes when we are full, so please submit these requests as early as you can.
  
  What your patients see
  

2. Update the "Closed for Clinical Requests" Message If you use request windows, update the message shown when ‘new health problem’ and ‘ongoing health problem’ are closed.

• Go to: Demand Management Settings page
• Example Wording:
  From 1 Oct 2025, NON-URGENT appointments (e.g. smear tests, vaccinations, long-term condition reviews) are open on Patchs 8am-6:30pm. You can submit requests for NON-URGENT appointments via the ‘admin query’ route.
  
  
  What your patients see
  

Step 4: Set Up Your Care Navigator Rules

This is where you will configure the automatic urgent request management.

1. Navigate to your AI Care Navigator settings page and select Add new action.
   
2. Select the Condition:
   • Choose "Urgency AI" as your condition type.
   • Select either "Emergency" or "Urgent" (or both if creating a single rule).
     
3. Choose Your Action:
   • Select Send message template.
     
   • Use the recommended Requests unavailable template.
     
   • Tip: To make it easier for patients, you can create a custom template (e.g., "Requests unavailable at My Practice") that includes your practice telephone number.
4. Set Cancellation Options:
   
   • Allow cancel: Gives patients the option to cancel. They can still continue to submit their request.
     
   • Force cancel: Patients must cancel their request. This stops the request from being submitted.
     
     
     
     
     💡 Staff Submissions with 'Force Cancel' If a staff member submits a request on behalf of a patient (total triage), they will be given the option to cancel (like 'Allow cancel'). This ensures you can still submit urgent requests for patients at all times. For requests submitted directly by patients, 'Force cancel' will be enforced.
   • Show Patient Message Upfront: When using 'Force cancel', you can (and should) enable this. 
     
     
     
     It displays a warning message to patients before they begin writing, informing them that certain request types cannot be handled at that time.
     
5. Configure Time Windows:
   • Set the times when urgent/emergency requests should be redirected (e.g., 14:30 to 23:59, using the 24-hour clock).
     
   • Important: The time settings do not currently cross over midnight. To cover 2:30 pm to 8:00 am the next day, you must create two rules (e.g., Rule 1: 14:30-23:59, Rule 2: 00:00-07:59).
   • You can edit these time windows in real-time (on the fly) if you need to adjust capacity.
6. Review and Order Your Actions:
   • If a patient cancels their request, no subsequent actions are triggered.
   • We recommend putting any 'blocking' (Force cancel) message at the very top of your 'Action Order' list. This ensures urgent requests are identified immediately.

What to Expect: Patient & Staff Experience

What Happens for Patients?

When a patient attempts to submit an urgent request during your configured "blocked" times:

1. The AI instantly analyses their free-text submission.
2. If identified as urgent, the patient immediately sees your custom message directing them to appropriate care.
3. Routine and administrative requests continue through as normal.

Managing Cancelled Requests (Staff View)

All cancelled requests appear in a dedicated "Cancelled Inbox" for review and audit. This provides a complete audit trail.

• Benefit: If a patient phones the practice after cancelling, staff can quickly access the original request details from the Cancelled Inbox, so the patient doesn't need to repeat their information.
• Safety Feature: If a patient was previously blocked by a Care Navigator action and attempts to submit another request, staff will see a warning message alerting them to this history.
  

Best Practices

• Test your configuration with sample urgent scenarios before going live.
• Customise your messages to include specific instructions for your local urgent care pathways.
• Monitor the system regularly to ensure it's working as intended.
• Consider different rules for weekends, bank holidays, or staff training days.
• Update your time windows on the fly based on your practice's daily capacity.

Care Navigator for October Contract - FAQs

Q: Is AI required for these rules? 
A: Yes, both AI and the AI Care Navigator must be enabled, you need at least one AI enabled to have AI Care Navigator.

Q: Where are the settings to switch on AI? 
A: You can activate Patchs AI and the AI Care Navigator from your practice's "Feature settings" page. This help article explains how.

Q: Is there any cost to the practice for turning on and using the AI feature? 
A: No, Patchs AI is included as part of your Patchs product fee.

Q: I think the issue with fully turning on AI ends up creating more work as patients are confronted with multiple forms if they have more than one symptom. 
A: The reason we ask patients to complete the different health topic questionnaires upfront is to ensure the practice has the necessary information to respond adequately without excessive back-and-forth. However, you can build your own custom rules within the AI Care Navigator if this would work better.

Q: Instead of a cut-off time, are you able to set a cut-off limit of the number of urgent requests received? (e.g., after 30 urgent requests) 
A: There is no automatic feature for a request-based cutoff because you don't know if something's urgent until the patient has submitted it. You could use the rate limiter to address this (e.g., only have 'admin' as unlimited), but this would be your practice's choice.

Q: If you turn on AI can you turn off some elements - such as automatically sending patients questionnaires to complete?
A: Yes. You understandably need Urgency AI to be enabled for this to work, but you don't have to enable any other AI elements.

Q: We have AI turned on but can't see the option to set the cancellation options or configure time windows.

A: The 'send cancellation' and 'configure time' options were rolled out on 11/09/2025 and should be available to all practices with AI Care Navigator enabled. If you cannot see these options, please contact support@patchs.ai.

Q: With Patchs Care Navigator do you have to enable the booking links or will it automatically be set up?
A: If your practice already has self-booking enabled, the links will be available as soon as you activate the AI Care Navigator. If you want help setting up appointment self-booking, please contact support@patchs.ai.

Q: What happens if we need to stop urgent requests earlier or later than planned? 
A: Your time window settings can be edited in real-time (on the fly). Just remember to adjust them back for the next day.

Q: As a staff user, can I submit an urgent request on behalf of a patient when a force cancel rule is active? 
A: Yes. If you are a member of staff submitting on behalf of a patient, you will be given the option to cancel the request, meaning you can still continue to submit it. This ensures practices using total triage can still submit urgent requests. For requests submitted by patients, the force cancel will be enforced.

Care Navigator for October Contract - Useful videos

Setting up Care Navigator Rules

Urgent request submitted as a health problem - redirected

Urgent request submitted as an admin request - redirected

Non-urgent request - submitted to practice

Non-urgent request becomes urgent after answering a questionnaire - redirected

Further Support

For further questions about configuring your AI Care Navigator, contact the Patchs Support Team at support@patchs.ai.