Information from the NHS England Primary Care Bulletin states that all ICBs will now have offered the Advice and Guidance Enhanced Service to practices via CQRS. Practices now have until 27 May 2025 to confirm participation.

This new enhanced service provides up to £80m in additional funding and enables practices to claim £20 per episode of care for GP led pre-referral Advice and Guidance requests.

Practices signing up can claim for eligible advice and guidance requests (as described in the specification), that have been completed since 1 April 2025.

Lincolnshire LMC are working with the ICB to make the Advice and Guidance Enhanced Service pragmatic and useful and are asking them to define what is expected as we do not support practices having to do additional workload as a result.

There is a cap to the funding so the ICB are looking at how this can be deployed across practices. While funding of £20 per Advice and Guidance episode is welcome, our calculations using our enhanced services calculator suggest it costs around £40 to undertake a simple Advice and Guidance required blood test or patient interaction as a result of the advice. Practices should be aware of this when considering undertaking the resulting advice, particularly if a complex reply requesting multiple tests/reviews by the GP practice.