>Maybe this is not news to you but today my neighbouring practice received
>two newborn registration documents with the same number. I then heard that
>this is not an isolated problem and we should not rely on this number as a
>unique patient identifier. How can so much time and money have been spent
>without devising a proper method for issuing numbers to the newborn. We
>might as well have stayed with the old numbers. Perhaps the lottery machine
>could be kept busy all week issuing the new numbers.
>
>**************************************************************************
>Stuart Skeates [log in to unmask]
>Romsey, Hants
>General Medical Practitioner
>PGP ID: 102AB451: 58 A1 3A D4 30 54 E2 17 5D E7 84 79 42 8B 79 D1
>**************************************************************************
>
This is a problem caused by Registrars, who are issued with a master disk to
provide them with unique numbers and strict instructions what to do. So far
the NHRegister has detected 25 ways of evading the instructions, which of
course they are trying to prevent by new instructions and new software. They
reckon to have most possible errors covered by a release next April, and to
mop up the odder ones in a second release 7 months later.
Sample errors are: If a Registrar wishes to subdivide to enable
sub-registrars to issue numbers, there is a strict 4-step procedure for
making daughter floppies. If this is incorrectly carried out, the
sub-registrar can be given numbers to issue that are being used somewhere else.
2. In some cases Registrars have actually duplicated a sub-distribution
floppy and sent it to different subdistricts.
3. There has to be a possibility of overriding the validation procedure so
that, in some exceptioinal cases, a non-standard number can be given
(something to do reregistration of long-since births) and not be rejected.
Either deliberately or by mistake some registrars have got into this mode
and issued an incorrect number which escapes validation/rejection.
4. Some subdistricts do not have computers and issue numbers manually, with
possibility of simple human error.
None of these invalid numbers get past the NHS Register when they reach
there BUT it may be weeks or in a few cases months before someone duplicates
a perfectly correct number already issued, in which case both numbers become
invalid and have to be retrieved and replaced. By this time the first number
may be well embedded in HA, GP and other software. For reasons I do not
entirely follow (being a lurker of considerable age and now limited brain)
retrieving and correcting wrong numbers that have got onto child health
registers is a particular chore.
(Here followeth the commercial)
Read all about it in the December BJHC&IM, out next week.
Senior Lurker
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|