§ Mr. BarronTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list for the most recent dates for which figures are available(a) the number of duplicate NHS numbers issued since the project to issue computerised numbers began and (b) the cost to the NHS to date of correcting this problem. [19546]
§ Mr. HoramBetween 4 December 1995, when the new national health service number was introduced, and 5 March 1997, the latest date for which figures are available, approximately 6,750 new NHS numbers had been re-issued by registrars of births and deaths at a subsequent birth registration. This is less than 1 per cent.342W of all birth registrations. Whenever an NHS number is erroneously re-issued, at least two registrations are affected. Occasionally, NHS numbers have been re-issued more than once, thereby affecting three or more registrations.
If an NHS number is re-issued at a birth registration this is detected by the NHS central register and all affected babies are issued with a unique replacement number. The cost to the NHS of correcting non-unique NHS numbers in patient registers is neglible. The cost of amending the software used by registrars of births and deaths to issue NHS numbers is being met by the Office for National Statistics.