NHS Number Safer Practice Notice issued

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