Local campaigns for NHS Number

The Department of Health and NHS Connecting for Health have announced that they will not be launching a public awareness campaign to promote the NHS Number.

Despite receiving a number of queries from local organisations, the NHS Number Programme has instead laid out advice on how organisations can improve public awareness of the number and its use.

The advice is informed by a pilot project at Stockton-on-Tees Teaching Primary Care Trust (formerly North Tees Primary Care Trust), which explored ways of informing patients about their NHS Number.

The NHS Number Programme is recommending that strategic health authorities and PCTs launch public awareness campaigns at regional or local level.

It suggests campaigns could include sending patients a letter with their NHS Number on it or giving patients an individual, pre-printed NHS Number card.

NHS North East Essex is one of the PCTs that have already launched their own campaign. NHS staff are being told that they must use the NHS Number on all written correspondence with patients.

Michelle Burkey, project manager at NHS North East Essex, said: “While patients do not need to know their NHS Number to receive NHS care, knowing and showing it can help those treating [them] to find records and share them safely with other healthcare professionals providing care.”

She said that the move is designed to improve patient safety by enabling healthcare staff to find patient records more easily and share them safely with others.

“The NHS Number can be found on the medical card or recent correspondence from the NHS. Patients can also write to Essex Contractor Services a full name, date of birth and address and when they were last registered with a GP practice. A letter will then be sent back notifying them with their NHS Number,” she added.

CfH said that materials such as information leaflets and revised leaflets detailing lessons learned from using the NHS Number will be made available to SHAs and PCTs if they do not already have them.

Work is also being carried out by the NHS Number Programme to provide a guidance design template for a leaflet with press-out cards with NHS Numbers on them, which could be adapted locally.

Link: NHS Connecting for Health