** Scotland Only ** - CHI Number Validation Changes Being Implemented by Practitioner Services Division (PSD) from 1st February 2026

Only a small number of patients are expected to be affected by these changes. Vision will be developed further in due course to fully support the extended range of newly issued CHI numbers. In the meantime a registration can still be completed in Vision for such a patient and the CHI number will be added to the patient record as normal when the approval transaction is received from PSD. 

However, until Vision is able to fully support the CHI changes implemented by PSD, the following NHS Scotland National Services will not be available for affected patients as CHI number validation will fail.  

ePharmacy  

• Acute Medication Service (AMS) - A printed prescription can be issued and pharmacies will be able to dispense the medications. However, the prescription will not contain a barcode. 
• Chronic Medication Service (CMS) - This service will not be available as a barcoded script is required. 

• No SCI-DC extracts will be available for these patients for viewing by healthcare staff across NHS Scotland to support diabetes care at Outpatient Clinics and in Out-Of-Hours settings. 

Other NHS Scotland National Services that send information to or receive information from the clinical system may not be able to support the CHI changes implemented by PSD and therefore may additionally be unavailable for patients with these CHI numbers. If GP practices encounter any issues with NHS Scotland National Services for patients with the new CHI numbers, they should contact the relevant affected service(s) to request assistance. 

To assist practices in identifying patients with a new CHI number from the extended pool OneAdvanced has established a clinical audit named 'New CHI Numbers'. This is included in the 'in_practice_systems_daily_20251211.zip' file available for download here.

These patients are specified by the line in Red text 'Patients with a valid CHI number ONLY matching the Modulus 10 number pool extension (new numbers)' included in the audit:

An active Yellow Note reminder will be automatically generated and added to the records of any associated patients specified by the audit line in Red text identified using the 'New CHI Numbers' clinical audit referenced above. This will comprise the default text 'Patient's CHI number is new CHI format' so that GP practice users are aware of such patients for whom there will be temporary limitations in NHS Scotland National Services availability until these services and Vision are able to be further developed to fully support the changes that have been implemented by PSD. 

In addition, note that the new format of CHI number will not currently be searchable in Vision Anywhere. Where a CHI number is used to search for a patient using Vision Anywhere and the patient is not found, it is recommended to search using surname instead as the results returned will include all patients.