Proposal for Future Identification of NHS BoardsV3.0
National Reference Files
Proposal
Future Identification of NHS Boards
VERSION:3.0
Document Control:
Document ControlVersion / V3.0
Date Issued / 03.04.12
Author(s) / Clare Harper
Other Related Documents
Comments to /
Document History
Version / Date / Comment / Author(s)
V0.1 / 01.06.11 / C Harper
V1.0 / 26.09.11 / Draft to Final Version / C Harper
V2.0 / 22.11.11 / Amendment to wording :
‘Health Board’ to ‘NHS Board’ / C Harper
V3.0 / 03.04.12 / Amendment to Appendix A :
Clarification of use of ciphers ‘D’ and ‘K’ / C Harper
TABLE of CONTENTS
1.INTRODUCTION...... 4
1.1Purpose
1.2Background
1.3Definitions, Acronyms and Abbreviations
2.BUSINESS CONTEXT
2.1Current Processes
3.PROPOSAL
4.benefits AND DISBENIFITS
5.proPOSAL assumptions
6.stakeholders
Appendix A - CURRENT HEALTH BOARD & OTHER CIPHERS
Appendix B - CIPHERS UNUSED/IDENTIFIED FOR POSSIBLE REASSIGNMENT
Appendix c - CURRENT LOCATION CODE STRUCTURE
Appendix d - CURRENT organisation CODE STRUCTURE
APPENDIX E - SCENARIOS
1.INTRODUCTION
1.1Purpose
The purpose of this document is to prepare a way forward for any future reorganisations of the National Health Service in Scotland which may result in a requirement to alter the way in which Location Codes are defined.
Appendix A identifies the current usage of letters as Health Board and Other ciphers. Current Location and Organisational Code structures using Health Board ciphers can be found in Appendices C and D.
Two letters remain for future use as Health Board ciphers. Following investigations into the use of letters not currently assigned to a NHS Board,fourfurther letters were identified as not having any location codes associated with them at this point in time. These can be found in Appendix B. ISD need to ensure that, should these letters be re-assigned to any ‘new’ NHS Board area, this would not create problems locally at the Boards or with any other stakeholders.
The proposal detailed in this paper is to make use of the four remaining letters suitable for use, along with the digits 2 to 9 for future identification of NHS Boards.
1.2Background
Within NHS Scotland, reference codes are used to uniquely identify objects such as organisations, locations and people. These codes underpin the information systems that are used to plan, manage and monitor the NHS so it is essential that the coding schemes are robust and fit for purpose. The reference coding schemes need to be flexible enough to accommodate any organisational changes. A new coding scheme would require to be shareable with other Agencies. The national reference files are maintained by ISD on behalf of NHS Scotland.
The first major change to NHS boundaries since 1974 occurred in April 2006 with the dissolution of NHS Argyll & Clyde. ISD mapped existing location codes to NHS Highland or NHS Greater Glasgow which became NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde. Post April 2006 new location codes were prefixed with either ‘H’ or ’G’ depending on geographical location.At the same time the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in England started using two of the remaining letters (J for the ‘new’ Greater Glasgow & Clyde and ‘K’ for the ‘new’ Highland) in the UK postcode dataset thus highlighting a real danger of the possibility of running out of letters should another reorganisation of NHS Boards occur.
In 2007 Rhona Jack (ISD) was tasked with raising the level of awareness of this issue among Board’s IM&T professionals. She did this by sending out an impact assessment questionnaire and holding face to face discussions with some of the stakeholders. Boards were asked how many systems would be affected if changes were to be made to the NRF but they were given no indication at that stage as to what the changes were likely to be. The findings of the questionnaire highlighted not only the considerable financial cost that would be involved but the associated time taken and disruption involved to the extensive number of electronic / paper systems which use location and organisation codes across all Health Boards.
In 2008 David Brackenbridge (NSS) and Paul Woolman (ISD) held a workshop ‘to assess the effectiveness of the present approach to reference codes and to review the existing business drivers for change’ to quantify the extent of any benefits gained by introducing change. It was recommended that a Steering Group be set up to determine the benefits of a new reference coding system, to consider various options and how to move from the present system to any new system identified.
After David’s involvement with the project, Catriona Cameron (ISD) worked on the project for a short period of time and was at the point of setting up a group to initiate discussions, when she left.
Early in 2010 a National Reference Files Project Group was set up and led by Clare Harper, Programme Development Manager, ISD, with representation from a number of ISD groups as well as NRS. Six different options for the best way forward were discussed and measured against various criteria such as : the cost of any necessary system developments and associated disruption of services to patients; the length of time taken to introduce any change and who would be affected and require to be trained
The proposal in this document provides ISD with a strategy that will allow NHS Scotland to adopt new codes which have the ability to cope with future NHS reconfigurations and have sufficient capacity built in to avoid expensive change control requirements for e-Health systems.
1.3Definitions, Acronyms and Abbreviations
Outlined below is a table of acronyms and abbreviations, which may be used throughout the document and its associated definition.
Term / DefinitionA / Alpha character – letter of the alphabet
GMC / General Medical Council
HB / Health Board
HCP / Healthcare Professional
IM&T / Information Management & Technology
ISD / Information Services Division
N / Numeric character – single digit in the range 0 to 9
NHS / National Health Service
NRF / National Reference Files
NRS / Nation Records of Scotland
NSS / National Services Scotland
ONS / Office for National Statistics
2.BUSINESS CONTEXT
2.1Current Processes
To date, if there has been a reconfiguration of NHS Boards and / or a new NHS Board created, there have been enough letters of the alphabet to assign a letter to the new NHS Board concerned. There have therefore been no problems setting up new Location or Organisation codes associated with these new NHS Boards. However, now that few letters remain unused, it has become necessary to plan and preparea way forward before the next reconfiguration is announced.
3.PROPOSAL
DescriptionLetters ‘I’ and ‘M’ remain available for use
Reconsider the use of the following letters : ‘O’, ‘P’, ‘Q’ and ‘U’
Assignremaining letters to new NHS Boards.
After these letters have been utilised make use of the numbers 2 to 9 to identify Health Board
e.g.2202H where first digit ‘2’ relates to the new NHS Board
4.benefits AND DISBENIFITS
PROS / CONSNo action required at present
Minimal impact on Users
No change required for NHSBoards unaffected by reconfiguration
No system changes required as remaining with 5 characters
Structure of Location and Organisation codes would not be affected. / Possible confusion between letters ’I’ and‘O’ and numbers ‘0’ and‘1’ on paper based systems would rule out use of these options
Not futureproof but would accommodate up to 12reconfigurations that required the allocation of a new Health Board cipher (N.B. not all reconfigurations would require the assignment of a new HB cipher – please refer to scenarios)
Scenarios can be found in Appendix E
5.proPOSAL assumptions
The following assumptions have been made:
- There will be a reconfiguration within the National Health Service, Scotland within the next 5 years.
- All Patient Administration Systems can interchangealpha and numeric characters within current 5 digit field.
- Validation rules relating to Location codes will be revisited and amended appropriately.
.
6.stakeholders
A stakeholder is a person, project, organisation, system and / or role that would be affected by any change proposed to the format of Location or Organisation codes, and who therefore have needs to be considered.
Identified stakeholders are enumerated in the table below (please note this list is not exhaustive):
File Name:Proposal for Future Identification of NHS Boards
Date Printed: 06/10/2018
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Proposal for Future Identification of NHS BoardsV3.0
Stakeholder / UsesNHS Boards / e.g. I.M.&T. Systems; Paper systems; Estates, Supplies, Workforce Departments to identify locations
NHS Mail / Links e-mail address to location / organisation codes
SCI Gateway / Uses location codes to enable electronic referrals from Primary to Secondary Care
SWISS / Payroll system uses location codes to identify place of employment
ISD Datamarts / Uses location / organisation codes to link / report activity e.g. ACaDMe, SMR00, New Ways
Multiple Agencies / e.g. Police, prisons, sheriff courts
Local Authorities / e.g. Educational establishments, care homes are identified by location codes
NHS England / Uses location codes in Cross Border referrals
Ambulance Service / Uses location codes to get N3 connections for their Ambulance station sites
NHS 24 / e.g. IT systems using location code
Procurement / e.g. IT systems using location code
Appendix A - CURRENT HEALTH BOARD & OTHER CIPHERS
A – NHS Ayrshire & Arran
B – NHS Borders
C – NHS Argyll & Clyde (disbanded)
D – Domicilliary
E – NHS England
F – NHS Fife
G – NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde
H – NHS Highland
I – Unused
J – Used by ONS in UK postcode dataset to identify the ‘new’ Greater Glasgow & Clyde
K – Used by ONS in UK postcode dataset to identify the ‘new’ Highland (incorporating Argyll & Bute)
Also used for some National Locations / Organisations .e.g. State Hospital and Golden Jubilee
National Hospital
L – NHS Lanarkshire
M – Unused
N – NHS Grampian
O – Outside U.K.
P – Used by Pharmacy
Q – No fixed abode
R – NHS Orkney
S – NHS Lothian
T – NHS Tayside
U – Used when HB is unknown
V – NHS Forth Valley
W – NHS Western Isles
X – Used to represent some Government locations & NSS properties
Y – NHS Dumfries
Z - NHS Shetland
Appendix B - CIPHERS UNUSED/IDENTIFIED FOR POSSIBLE REASSIGNMENT
I – Unused
M – Unused
O – Outside U.K. – no location codes currently use ‘O’ as HB cipher
P – Used by Pharmacy – no location codes currently use ‘P’ as HB cipher
Q – No fixed abode - no location codes currently use ‘Q’ as HB cipher
U – Used when HB is unknown - no location codes currently use ‘U’ as HB cipher
Note :
Letters ‘I’ and ’O’ would need to be ruled out due to possible confusion with the numbers ‘1’ and ‘0’.
Appendix c - CURRENT LOCATION CODE STRUCTUREUSING HEALTH BOARD CIPHER
Current Location Code comprises 5 digits in the format ANNNA
1st digit is an alpha character relating to Health Board cipher
2nd to 4th digits are 3 numeric characters
5th digit is an alpha character indicating location type
e.g. A101H
A – NHS Ayrshire & Arran
101 – sequential number
H – location type ‘H’ for Hospital
N.B. There are some exceptions to this rule e.g. State Hospital and Golden Jubilee National Hospital have 1st digit ‘D’ and Location Codes D101H and D102H.
APPENDIX D - CURRENT ORGANISATION CODE STRUCTURE USING HEALTH BOARD CIPHER
Current Organisation Code comprises 5 digits in the format AA A/N NN
1st digit is the alpha character ‘S’ for Scotland
2nd digit is an alpha character relating to Health Board cipher when the organisation is regional
3rd digit can be either alpha or numeric and indicates organisation type
4th & 5th digits are 2 numeric characters
e.g. SAC03
S – Scotland
A – NHS Ayrshire & Arran
C – Organisation Type ‘C’ for NHS Trust (now redundant)
03 – sequential number
N.B Organisations at a national level generally have 'D' as the 2nd digit. e.g. State Hospital and Golden Jubilee National Hospital have Organisation CodesSDA01 andSDA02 ( Organisation Type ‘A’ for
Directly Managed Unit).
.
APPENDIX E - SCENARIOS
Discounting the letters ’I’ and ‘O’ and the numbers ‘0’ and ‘1’ (due to possible confusion) this proposal would allow for a maximum of 12 future reconfigurations where that reconfiguration necessitates the creation of a new HB cipher.
Example 1 :
Reconfiguration where a new HB cipher would not be required - when one or more ‘small’ NHS Boards merge with a larger NHS Board.
Post date of reconfiguration all existing location codes within the smaller NHS Board(s) would be mapped to the larger NHS Board and any new location codes requiring to be set up in the former smaller NHS Board area(s) would then take on the HB cipher of the larger NHS Board.
This scenario is akin to what happened when NHS Argyll & Clyde disbanded in April 2006.
Example 2 :
Reconfiguration where a new HB cipher may be required – when two or more of the larger NHS Boards merge.
If necessary, a new HB cipher would be created using first available letter or number e.g. ‘2’.
Post date of reconfiguration existing location codes of the merging NHS Boards would be mapped to the new NHS Board having cipher ‘2’ and any new location codes requiring to be set up within the new NHS Board area would use HB cipher ‘2’ and take the format 2NNNA.
NOTES :
If, at some time in the future, a decision is made to have a small number of NHS Board ‘Areas’ in Scotland, then these could either
a)take on a new HB cipher as per proposal with existing NHS Board location codes mapped to the new NHS Board ‘Area’ or
b)new NHS Board Area codes could be set up and all NHS Boards existing at that point in time would have their location codes mapped to the appropriate new NHS Board ‘Area’ code.
File Name:Proposal for Future Identification of NHS Boards
Date Printed: 06/10/2018
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