The implementation of SNOMED CT is mandated by law (Section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, issued on 2 November 2016). “Secondary care, acute care, mental health, community systems, dentistry and other systems used in direct patient care must use SNOMED CT as the clinical terminology by 1 April 2020”
A subsequent announcement delayed the implementation date until 1 April 2021
Turn On/Off
Snomed can now be easily turned on or off on the practice settings window accessed from the configure menu. Whilst this is currently only mandated for NHS England region practices, it can be turned on in other NHS regions if desired.
NHS Courses Only
SNOMED will now only be requested when charting NHS courses of treatment. Providers can still add SNOMED codes to other treatment, but this is outside the normal workflow. If your practice wants to be prompted to apply SNOMED codes to all treatments this can be enabled by changing the setting
snomed.NHSonly to '0'.
Add New SNOMED codes
In addition to the list of SNOMED codes originally suggested by the NHS, Exact now allows