Everyone registered with the NHS in England and Wales has their own NHS Number. It is the only national unique patient identifier, used to help healthcare staff and service providers match you to your health records. It is an important step towards providing you with safer patient care.

Each NHS number is a unique 10-digit number. The old style of NHS Numbers had a mixture of letters and numbers and was replaced with new style of NHS numbers in 1996.

You do not need to know your NHS Number to receive NHS care, however if you do know your NHS Number it can help the person treating you to find your medical records more quickly and share them more safely with other health care professionals.

The NHS number is becoming more important as systems such as ‘Choose and Book’ use them to identify patients accurately.

At Yelverton Surgery, we already use NHS number on all letters to the hospital and have now started adding them to letters we send out to patients so that you can make a note of your NHS number.

There are a number of ways you can obtain your NHS number from the surgery;

1. Come into the surgery in person and request your NHS number. We will need to see some I.D to make sure we are giving the NHS Number to the correct person. The receptionist will then write down your NHS Number for you to take away.
2. Ring in for your NHS Number. We will need to ask you a few questions to verify we are talking to you.
3. You can also request your NHS number via our website by using the patient request form; we cannot email you your NHS number for security reasons but we can post it to you, ring you at home or arrange for it to be collected from the surgery at your convenience. Please state on the patient request form which option would be best for you.