Lateral Flow Device (LFD) Service
Written by AlisonFreemantle on Friday 23rd May 2025
Changes to patient cohort eligibility
Following an update to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on antiviral treatment for COVID-19, which removes some of the cohorts of patients eligible for these treatments, changes need to be made to the Lateral Flow Device (LFD) service.
The changes in the NICE guidance means the following patient cohorts are no longer eligible to receive free LFD tests through the service:
- People aged 85 years and over
- People with end-stage heart failure who have a long-term ventricular assistance device
- People on the organ transplant waiting list
- People resident in a care home who are aged 70 years and over
- People resident in a care home who have a BMI of 35 kg/m2 or more
- People resident in a care home who have diabetes
- People resident in a care home who have heart failure
- People currently in a hospital who are aged 70 years and over
- People currently in a hospital who have a BMI of 35 kg/m2 or more
- People currently in a hospital who have diabetes
- People currently in a hospital who have heart failure
The service specification has been reviewed to remove the above patient cohorts; no other changes have been made to the service specification and NHS England will publish this shortly.
Pharmacies need to update their standard operating procedure (SOP) and brief their team on the changes to the eligible patient cohorts for the service, and stop supplying LFD tests to the above patient groups as soon as they are able to do so.
At the latest, this should be completed by Monday 16th June 2025.
Resources to support the changes to the service
CPE have updated the Eligible patient groups for the LFD service factsheet to reflect the changes to the eligible patient cohorts and our Pharmacy team briefing sheet and have also updated our LFD service SOP template to reflect the change:
In addition, they have produced an explainer for patients that pharmacy teams can use to support conversations with patients who were previously eligible for free LFD tests but due to the updated NICE guidance are no longer eligible; patients can also be signposted to the NHS website, which has also been updated to reflect the eligible patient cohorts.
Further information on the LFD service can be found on the CPE LFD service page