Last Monday in Parliament the MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, Tim Loughton wrote a very significant question to the Government and the Minister who responded was Neil O’Brien The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care. The headline for the session in this website was Medical Records: Children and the question that Tim Loughton asked was “To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the Government has made of the potential merits of a consistent child identifier for children with complex health needs.” Here is the answer that Neil O’Brien provided which is available here.

Every child is assigned a National Health Service number at birth or the first time they have contact with NHS services. The NHS number acts as a unique patient identifier and is used to share information within electronic healthcare records. This contributes to improved health outcomes for children including those with complex health needs, by ensuring that health professionals identify patients correctly and have access to information to inform the delivery of appropriate care.

So it would be very interesting to obtain responses from charities and people who campaign on this theme. Perhaps Tim could ask more questions?