Mr. Peter Lennon:

The logical approach would be that might happen but those hospital number systems have been built up over time and it might take some time for the individual health organisations to phase them out. The way it should work is that you would have two unique identifiers, the PPSN which is the public-facing one which you give at the desk and for verification purposes, it is backed up by the IHI. On communication between the hospital you attend first and the next one, the PPSN will be the number that is on the correspondence. It may also have the IHI, if necessary. But there should no longer be the medical record numbers following the patient around the system. It will be the PPSN that follows them.