NHS Number Safer Practice Notice issued

Tags: Safety Wales

22 Sep 2008

The National Patient Safety Agency has urged all NHS organisations in England and Wales to use the NHS Number as a national, unique patient identifier to reduce errors caused by local numbering systems.

The NPSA, together with NHS Connecting for Health in England and Informing Healthcare in Wales, has issued a Safer Practice Notice about the NHS Number, after receiving 1,300 reports of incidents resulting from reliance on local numbering systems in two years.

It says many of the problems reported to it between June 2006 and August this year arose from duplication in local numbering systems, such as one patient having more than one number of two patients having the same number.

Local hospital numbering systems can still be used alongside the NHS Number “where necessary.” However, NHS organisations must act on the notice by September 2009.

The notice says that the NHS Number and its barcoded equivalent should be used in all correspondence, notes, patient wristbands and patient care systems to support accuracy in identifying patients and linking records.

And it says that organisations should put a processes in place to ensure patients know their own NHS number, can remember it and understand how it can improve their safety.

NHS medical director professor Sir Bruce Keogh, who is the senior responsible officer for the NHS Number Programme, said: "We should no longer accept the level of misallocated records and the misidentification of patients as inevitable or normal.

"We must change the way we work and identify all patients by their NHS Number, which will reduce potential errors and harm in the future.”

The Safer Practice Notice supports CfH’s NHS Number Programme, which is working towards complete adoption of the NHS Number to help improve patient care within the NHS.

External links

NPSA Safer Practice Notice

NHS Connecting for Health NHS Number Programme

Simona Stankovska

Readers Comments

Reassuring news

23 Sep 08 13:45

>>many of the problems reported to [NPSA] between June 2006 and August this year arose from duplication in local numbering systems, such as one patient having more than one number [or] two patients having the same number<<

The National Patient Safety Agency presumably received confirmation that the rates of duplicate and conflated registrations in NHS Number / PDS are superior to those of locally held master patient indexes. Would it be possible for CfH to share this welcome reassurance (and how it has been determined) with the widest possible NPfIT audience?

Good news - so sensible

25 Sep 08 21:54

Been waiting years for this - a sensible directive from on high! Never could understand why we had hospital number and NHS numbers.

Shame the NHS Number in England is so hard to remember.

In Scotland is it not your year month day of birth and birth rank order on that day?

What happens about visitors to UK,with no NHS number?

What does it mean?

29 Sep 08 07:31

So what does it actually mean? The statement says: "Use the NHS Number as the national patient identifier; OR the NHS Number as the national patient identifier in conjunction with a local hospital numbering system (NB where local hospital numbers are used they must be used alongside and not instead of the NHS Number)." But what else would we use as a national identifier other than the NHS number? Does it mean use the NHS numer as the primary identifier locally as well?

chocolate teapot

29 Sep 08 09:28

In order to be able to use NHS numbers as a primary identifier in an acute trust we need:

PAS systems that can check against PDS in real time. NPfIT haven't delivered this.

Accurate data on PDS. Laughable.

Changes to ensure that ALL patients who pitch up in NHS A&E departments actually have an NHS Number. Currently many do not.

Until this all happens it is just an optional second i.d which may or may not be useful for data quality work, depending on the data quality of the PDS....

NPSA NHS NUMBER USAGE

Nigel.Porter@whe.wales.nhs.uk

13 Oct 08 11:37

If we are going to use a number why not the NI number. Most people are familiar with it because it is used on so many systems such as tax. I doubt if many people know they have an NHS number