Safe clinical treatment of any given patient relies on the information held being particular and pertinent to that patient.

As the delivery of patient care is now often shared across a number of NHS clinical or business areas and suppliers, so the effective linking up and flow of information related to a patient has become even more important.

General Practices

There are important reasons for General Practices to use an NHS Number, to:

• accurately link the patient to their record
• transfer patient records electronically using GP2GP
• make referrals using Choose and Book
• send electronic prescription messages
• accurately identifying patients in all communications with secondary and community care.

"From a GP perspective, clinical safety and having the right patient, right record, every time, is the top priority", Dr Peter Short (GP).

Clinical care

The NHS Number makes important contributions to clinical care because it:

• is the only National Unique Patient Identifier
• supports safer practice identification practices
• helps create a complete record, linking every episode of care across organisations.

Hospital administration

The NHS Number is important to hospital administration because:

• it helps create a complete record for each patient
• it enables information to be safely transferred across organisational boundaries
• babies are given their own NHS Number to link their healthcare records for life

Reception staff

Important improvements reception staff can make to patient safety, include:

• asking a patient to provide the appointment letter or card with their NHS Number printed on it
• checking if each patient has an NHS Number on your system
• asking each patient to check their names are spelt correctly to help determine their NHS Number and checking their date of birth
• obtaining the correct NHS Number for each patient at the beginning of the episode of care.

Identification

You can help identify every patient correctly whenever they seek care by:

• asking the patient to confirm that their NHS Number, first name, last name, date of birth and postcode are all correct
• asking the patient to confirm that this information is the same as that held at their GP practice.