The UKRDC is a somewhat unique patient record database, in that it contains multiple individual records for the same physical patient.
This is because a given patient may, for example, attend multiple hospitals, each sending their own feed to the UKRDC. Similarly, a patient may move from one hospital to another, creating multiple records within the UKRDC. Importantly, for data protection, security, and organisation reasons, feeds from different renal units will always be stored as separate records within the UKRDC.
Furthermore, patients may have “secondary” records, such as old historic data migrated from older UKKA systems, tracing records used to verify demographic information, and membership records (see (v4) Managing PKB memberships).
In order to keep these records organised and useful, we group individual records corresponding to a single physical patient by a UKRDC ID. A single UKRDC ID is shared by all the individual records for a single patient.
For example, let’s take a made-up patient, Benson Dunwoody, who has a record being sent to the UKRDC from a renal unit PARK01 via a UKRDC/RDA feed. The patient, a frequent traveller, also has a record being sent from EASTPINES via a UKRDC/RDA feed, a PKB membership record, and an NHSBT record. Each of these records is stored individually within the UKRDC to allow staff at each unit to view only their data, and to prevent secondary records such as memberships and tracing data from interfering with the records sent by renal units (and vice versa). However, each of these records has a common UKRDC ID, and thus get grouped within the UKRDC.
A patient record will include a list of all other records for that patient that the current user has permission to access. For example, a member of staff at one renal unit will not be able to see any individual records from other renal units, even for the same patient.
You will also be able to see the filename, time, and status of the most recent file received for the patient (see Active failing records).
Clicking “peek record” on a particular record will display additional basic information about that record, including patient numbers (national identifiers, and local hospital numbers for example), and creation and update times for the record.
Clicking on a record will take you to a complete view of that record.
FAQ
Why do you need a UKRDC ID? Can you not group records by NHS number?
No, quite simply because a patient could, for example, move between England and Scotland, and thus have two separate patient records with entirely different national identifiers, one an NHS number, and the other a CHI number.
Additionally, from time-to-time NHS numbers get incorrectly entered and so cannot be treated as immutable. A UKRDC ID allows records to be grouped and ungrouped by UKRDC administrators without affecting important underlying data.
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