Numbers ...

Today one of the clients at the clinic I work at phoned me. He was an inpatient at a local hospital and wanted to know if we had his NHS number in his file. As we are a private healthcare facility, the answer was, no we don’t.

Any idea how I can get I he says ‘cos the hospital I am at will not treat me without it

Hmmmm. I would have thought that the hospital would know how to access it. Well back in NZ, all the numbers are issued from a central point and with the right authorisation number finding a client’s number is easy. 

So good old Google to the rescue. I typed in the question, ‘How do I find my NHS number?’ and then followed the direction. Which were, phone your local Primary care Trust. OK back to Google and type in the chaps address to find the PCT.

That done I phone the correct one and, Hello… Sorry we cannot give anyone the number over the phone. The hospital will have to send us a fax, here’s the number, requesting it. Then we will send back to them by fax.

So I send the chappie and email with the instructions, and about an hour later I get a phone call from the ward administrator ( ward clerk in NZ speak) asking for the details. He didn’t seem to know how to find out what patients NHS number was even though I know that my client had passed on the details. 

Not only do hospital patient here have a nationwide NHS number, each hospital also has its own hospital number. And they bear resemblance to each other.  How confusing is that. It’s like have a licence plate for your car and another one for the area that you live in, so which one would be the right one.