My husband has gone to register with a doctor a few weeks ago as he needs the Covid jab. His age group was called a couple of weeks ago. We moved to the area a year ago and he hadn’t yet registered as he hadn’t yet had the need.
After contacting 2 previous surgeries to get his NHS number he has been told by the registration team that this number does not belong to him. It belongs to a different person of the same with a similar birth date. This is news to us, as he has had appointments at the 2 surgeries over the last 10 years. He never had any problems registering in the past and when phoning the practice the correct birth date was on the system. The practice he was last registered to has told us he “de-registered” last October - this also did not happen - he has had no contact with them.
He has been in the UK approximately 12 years, he lived most of his life in New Zealand, although he was born in the UK and lived here as a child. He has found his medical card from when he was born and his NHS number is in the old style (letters and numbers).
We found a link which talks about old style / new style NHS numbers, but following the links / numbers we haven’t been able to get anywhere. www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/aboutnhs/Documents/4249%20NHS%20Number%20patient%20information.pdf
We also found a page on ‘Duplicates & Confusions’ relating to NHS numbers which sounds like what has happened: pcse.england.nhs.uk/help/registrations/patient-records-duplicates-and-confusions/
We have had many, many phone calls with the various doctors surgeries and 3 local practices and seem to be running in circles. We desperately want this issue sorted as you can understand - the short term aim is to get immunised for Covid ASAP. It seems this is not necessarily important to the surgeries as he isn’t yet a patient anywhere. It seems a pretty dangerous thing to happen if his NHS number is being used by someone else.
Has anyone else had a similar issue and how was it resolved?
Thanks in advance