Name, NHS No. and rural mileage validation rules

Amendments for patient names, rural mileages and NHS Numbers are corrected in Registration. Click on Patient Select then at the Registration Details screens, make the amendment. Click on OK to save.

Names

The only valid characters that can be used in surnames and forenames are:

A-Z, apostrophe ' hyphen - and spaces

Do not use lower case in surnames such as MacDonald - these should be entered as MACDONALD.

Surnames and forenames are allowed up to 30 characters.

Rural Mileage (England & Wales), Road Miles (Scotland)

Rural mileage corrections are made from a patient's Registration screen, using Patient Edit.

Rural mileage entries must only be numeric, have a maximum length of two characters and be between 3 and 50. The block Route/Special District Marker can only be either B or S. Walking Unit entries must only be numeric, two characters, and be in the range 3 and 99 and be exactly divisible by 3.

Road mileage entries must only be numeric, have a maximum length of two characters and be between 3 and 99. Footpath Miles and Water Mile entries must only be numeric, four characters (to two decimal places), and be in the range 1 and 99. Note that prompts for Footpath Miles and Water Miles only appear on patients' Registration (Other) screens if you check the two boxes that switch display of these prompts on - in File Maintenance, Organisation, double click on the TP/HB/CSA, Organisation Details screen.

NHS Numbers

NHS number corrections are made from a patient's Registration screen, using Patient Edit.

It is important to eliminate duplicate NHS numbers because it is an important requirement that each patient has a unique number.

The new NHS number is ten digits, displayed as 999 999 9999.

The old format NHS number should have a maximum of 15 characters and in one of 21 acceptable formats, with only A-Z alphabetic characters, 0-9 numeric digits (eg 01, or 001, or 999), and no punctuation with the exception of a forward slash /.

If the old NHS number is unknown, a ? is allowed.

In Scotland, the NHS number format is not validated, though validation takes place for valid characters.

The following are some correct example formats:

  • AAAAA9999
  • AAAAA999
  • AAAA9999999
  • AAA99A999
  • AA9/9999
  • A345/63/39/4726