Staff Index

Staff Index is part of our initiative to introduce a Single Sign-On capability to help smooth staff onboarding processes.

Staff Index links individuals to their roles, their employing organisations and their access permissions. It:

• maintains consistent identity records across organisations
• supports role-based access decisions
• enables identity to be reused across systems and services

This enables National Single Sign-On to determine who a user is and what they are allowed to access.

Any professional working in or delivering health and care services for the NHS is eligible to receive a Staff Index identifier.  

This includes professionals working in:

• England
• Isle of Man
• Northern Ireland
• Scotland
• Wales

Organisations include (but are not limited to): 

• NHS Trusts
• all of primary care, including general practice
• pharmacy, dentistry and optometry
• mental health and secure wards
• defence services
• care homes

A trusted and consistent identity is essential to delivering Single Sign-On at scale. Without it:

• identity data is duplicated across systems
• access decisions become inconsistent
• organisations must manage separate identity records

Staff Index provides a single source of truth, helping ensure accurate, secure access to systems. This reflects how national identity services manage and assign access to clinical systems and patient information today, through Care Identity Management.

Staff Index defines who the user is and what their role is. National Single Sign-On uses that identity to authenticate them. Together they provide:

• a seamless user experience
• consistent, role-based access
• improved security and auditability