Trusts in England have been told to start as soon as possible to move towards using the NHS Number as the unique identifier of patients within the NHS IT system. Though not compelled to use the NHS Number currently, trusts will be required to use it as the NHS Care Record is implemented from June 2004. In a joint letter to trust chief executives, Professor Peter Hutton, chairman of the National Clinical Advisory Board, and Professor Martin Severs, chairman of the Information Standards Board (ISB), explain that the decision to use the NHS Number as the unique identifier was taken by the ISB this month. “We are writing to you now to let you know that this important decision has been taken and that you should begin as soon as possible to move in this direction of travel,” they say. The NHS Information Authority has been running a long campaign to encourage universal use of the NHS number but, as Hutton and Severs explain in their letter, the NHS number cannot be mandated as a national standard because it is not universally available in all locations and for all patients. It will however be mandated as part of the implementation of the NHS Care Record from June 2004. The universal adoption of the NHS Number is seen as a key change needed to create electronic care records capable of identifying and tracking individual patients wherever they are present with symptoms or receive care. “Multiple identifiers in multiple sites greatly increase the chance of error with its obvious consequences,” Hutton and Severs say.
