The evidence base for the NHS Healthcheck is developing and the most recent evidence base can be found by visiting the Health Check website.
To assist with the NHS Health Check process, national guidance has been produced to support implementation of the programme. This guidance, along with a number of other relevant guidance documents, is available on the national NHS Health Checks website.
As part of this guidance a flow diagram has been produced on page 18 which presents the NHS Health Check process. This forms part of the specification. This should be used in conjunction with practice protocols. The flow diagram was updated in February 2017 to improve ease of use and align with current best practice.
The Devon NHS Healthchecks service specification that was updated in September 2017 is available.
The Checking for Diabetes risk pathway is also available.
Identification of patients
The principle of the programme is that the NHS Health Check should be offered to eligible individuals once every 5 years. A full list of exclusion codes is available below:
NHS Health Check Exclusion Read Codes
One suggestion is to systematise the NHS Health Check invite, such as inviting patients on their 40th, 45th 50th birthday etc.; or offering the check to new patients as part of their registration with your practice. These are just a couple of suggestions, but you may have other preferences for a pattern of invitation based on age band, group of people by ethnicity, gender or postcode, or take opportunity for people attending for other routine screening, for example. This is up to you, but this process should not widen health inequalities.