A number used to identify a person uniquely within the NHS in England and Wales as specified by UK Government Data Standards Catalogue (GDSC), Version 2.0, Agreed 01.01.02. It is mandatory to record the NHS NUMBER. There are exceptions, such as Accident and Emergency care, sexual health and major incidents, as defined in existing national policies.

Specializes

II

Attributes

Name	Data type	Occurs	Description
root	Uid	0..1	As specified by ISO 21090, a unique identifier that guarantees the global uniqueness of the instance identifier. This root may be either a DCE UUID (represented in upper case), an Object Identifier (OID), or a special identifier taken from lists that may be published by ISO or HL7. The root attribute ensures global computational uniqueness and may indicate the identification scheme to which the extension attribute (if present) must conform (e.g. NHS Number, UK Driver Number, etc). However, receivers must not attempt to infer the identity of the organisational entity (or entities) that manages the issuing of an identifier conforming to the scheme (e.g. NHS in England and Wales, UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, etc). Nor should they be used to infer the type of thing identified (e.g. patient, driver, etc). This is because a number of different organisations may manage the the assigment of identifiers belonging to a given scheme and that such authority may transfer from organisation to organisation over time while the scheme remains the same. Within the LRA, role types are specified using a separate type attribute.
extension	BusinessId	0..1	A character string as a unique identifier within the scope of the identifier root as specified by ISO 21090 and constrained within the LRA to type BusinessId. The root scheme and the scheme specific extension together create a globally unique identifier for the item that this II value identifies.
identifierName	String	0..1	As specified by ISO 21090, a human-readable name for the scheme represented by the root.
displayable	Boolean	0..1	As specified by ISO 21090, true if the identifier is intended for human display and data entry otherwise false, e.g. used only for machine interoperation.
scope	IdentifierScope	0..1	As specified by ISO 21090, the scope in which the identifier applies to the object with which it is associated.
reliability	IdentifierReliability	0..1	As specified by ISO 21090, the reliability with which this identifier is known. This attribute may be used to assist with identifier matching algorithms.

Constraints

Type	Name	Specification
Attribute extension is 10 (numeric) characters	LRA Invariant	inv: extension.size() = 10
root OID indicates a standard format NHS Number, or an old or temporary format NHS Number	LRA Invariant	inv: root = '2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.4.1' or root = '2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.3.2.4.3'

Reference Model Type