Why can’t registries use the NHS number instead of name and address?
Cancer registries do use the NHS number to link records whenever possible. Although the NHS number has almost 100% coverage in England and Wales, not everyone’s number can be traced and it still does not appear on every document produced in hospitals, e.g. pathology or radiology reports. Some patients might not therefore be registered, resulting in incomplete statistics. The NHS number consists of 10 digits and can very easily be mis-transcribed, which would lead to inaccurate data being recorded, possible duplication and the inability to link information to the correct patient. The use of the NHS number should improve over the next few years as it becomes more widely used to link records across the NHS as part of the work being undertaken by NHS Connecting for Health (previously called the National Programme for Information Technology). This should allow a further reduction in the use of identifiers other than NHS number by cancer registries.
