We collect the patient identifiers for only one reason and that is so we can link your patients to the NHS Medical Research Information Service (MRIS). This is so we can determine 90 day survival which is a big improvement in quality on hospital mortality. MRIS can only match using name, dob, postcode and NHS number is used by them to confirm the match (but by itself will not do).

To use this information in most instances requires patient consent, and to do so without consent requires an application to the Ethics and Confidentiality Committee (ECC) at the National Information Governance Board (NIGB). This body is authorised under the NHS Act 2006 (Section 251) to grant permission to use this data when seeking consent would be impracticable. Because the deteriorating ward patients are frequently confused and therefore lack capacity; because the population has a high mortality and seeking retrospective consent would be very difficult; and, because only using data from patients who can consent would exclude the sickest patients from the study and therefore introduce bias we have been granted time limited access to this data without consent.

Once we have completed the matching and ascertained 90 day survival then we destroy all identifiers.

We also have to pass a very extensive security check to ensure that the data is held securely.

All these documents and procedures have been reviewed by R&D and the ethics committee.