Hippo offers two versions of COVID and Flu recall cohorts — Basic and Enhanced — to help practices balance contractual requirements with clinical accuracy. Both options will generate legitimate patients to recall, but they use different logic and therefore produce different cohort sizes.
This guide explains exactly how they differ, why both exist, and how they affect your COVID/Flu campaigns.
🧾 Hippo Basic COVID/Flu Cohorts (NHSE Business Rules)
Hippo Basic follows the official NHSE Business Rules for COVID and Flu vaccinations.
These rules are designed for:
Contractual reporting
Payment accuracy
Reducing disputes between practices and NHSE
Ensuring practices are not penalised for vaccinating borderline patients
❓Why Basic cohorts are more permissive
NHSE Business Rules intentionally include:
Very broad diagnosis code sets
Legacy / historical codes
Flexible definitions (e.g., immunosuppression, chronic conditions)
Medications that might indicate risk, even if not clinically definitive
This ensures eligibility is easy for practices to meet and avoids under-reporting for payment.
⚕️Impact on COVID/Flu campaigns
Expect:
Bigger cohorts
More borderline or ambiguous cases (e.g., questionable asthma codes, broad immunosuppression sets)
Some patients with minimal expected clinical benefit
Full compatibility with contractual payment rules
Hippo Basic = “If NHSE counts it, we count it.”
🩺 Hippo Enhanced COVID/Flu Cohorts (Clinically Driven Criteria)
Hippo Enhanced applies strict, clinically validated definitions for who truly meets the criteria for COVID/Flu vaccination.
🏥 Where Enhanced criteria come from
Hippo Enhanced COVID/Flu definitions are based on:
The UKHSA Green Book (Flu & COVID chapters)
Current JCVI guidance
Clear clinical inclusion/exclusion rules
Review by Hippo’s clinical advisors
❓Why Enhanced cohorts are more precise
Enhanced logic narrows the list to patients who:
Clearly meet clinical definitions
Would genuinely benefit from vaccination
Do not fall into “borderline” categories that NHSE includes for contractual reasons
Meet current (not historic) guidance
⚕️Impact on COVID/Flu campaigns
Expect:
Smaller, more accurate cohorts
Removal of edge-case diagnoses
More reliable target-setting for clinical teams
Reduced “noise” in recall workloads
Hippo Enhanced = “Clinically correct, not contractually permissive.”
📊 How this affects recall lists
You can expect the following differences:
| Hippo Basic | Hippo Enhanced |
Purpose | Payment & contractual alignment | Clinical accuracy |
Code sets | Broad, legacy-friendly | Clinically validated |
Cohort size | Larger | Smaller |
Borderline cases | Included | Excluded |
Payment eligibility | ✔️ Fully eligible | ✔️ Fully eligible |
Best for… | Hitting targets, maximising cohort | Prioritising clinical benefit |
🧠 Which should my practice use?
It depends on your goal:
Use Enhanced if your priority is clinical precision, reducing noise, and focusing on the patients who will benefit most from intervention.
Use Basic if your priority is maximising the number of potentially eligible patients for payment.
Both are supported across Hippo campaigns and both are fully payment-compatible.