Two siblings living at the same address are registered with a GP. Italy is quoted as the birth place of both children.
A trace is carried out on PDS, which results in one child being registered under an existing NHS number on PDS, and the other child being registered under a newly allocated NHS number on PDS.
As a result of the new GP registration recorded at the existing NHS number, a notification is sent to the previous area of registration on that record to deduct the patient from the GP's list and to forward the medical records to the new area.
Two months later, the child with the pre-existing NHS number presents at the GP practice, and the practice is required to re-register the patient and retrieve the patient's medical records.
During the following 6 months, this child is deducted from the GP's list and the medical records removed in error, twice again.
The GP practice with the registration for the child that is repeatedly removed by mistake asks the child's mother, who confirms her child has never resided at the address which now appears on her child's PDS record.
The GP practice reports the confusion of 2 patient records to the NBO.
The NBO investigates and resolves the incident by creating a new PDS record with a newly allocated NHS number for the child born in Italy, hiding the incorrect data that has been added to the pre-existing PDS record, and liaising with the 2 Primary Care Support Services involved, to correct the NHS numbers held on their local systems.
The effect of a confused NHS number is that the patients involved may either have:
- additional information in their clinical record which does not belong to them
- an incomplete clinical record, on which a clinician may make a clinical judgement or may have made a clinical judgement in the past
Confusions are therefore clinically dangerous, and put patient safety at risk.
The PDS user's failure to validate the patient's address on the record traced demonstrates bad data quality practice.