NPSA urges NHS to use the NHS Number

NHS hospital and practices should use NHS numbers in order to limit the amount of potential administrative errors, according to the National Patient Safety Agency.

NHS medical director professor Sir Bruce Keogh, who holds responsibility 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.”

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