Read code: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Medical code system used in the UK}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2019}}

'''Read codes''' are a [[Medical terminology|clinical terminology]] system that was in widespread use in [[General Practice]] in the United Kingdom until around 2018, when NHS England switched to using [[SNOMED CT]]. Read codes are still in use in Scotland and in England arewere permitted for use in NHS secondary care settings, such as dentistry and mental health care until 31 March 2020. Read codes support detailed clinical encoding of multiple patient phenomena including: occupation; social circumstances; ethnicity and religion; clinical signs, symptoms and observations; laboratory tests and results; diagnoses; diagnostic, therapeutic or surgical procedures performed; and a variety of administrative items (e.g. whether a screening recall has been sent and by what communication modality, or whether an item of service fee has been claimed). It therefore includes but goes significantly beyond the expressivity of a [[diagnosis code|diagnosis coding]] system.

==History==

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A popular misconception is that all 4-Byte codes are also present in 5-Byte, where they will also carry the same meaning. Whilst in the majority of cases any 4-Byte code of the general form 'wxyz' will be equivalent to a 5-Byte code of the form 'wxyz.', there are notable exceptions. The 4-Byte code [E333 Fear of flying], for example, corresponds to 5-Byte [E202A Fear of flying]; no [E333.] code exists in 5-Byte Read at all.

===NHS mandationmandate===

In 1988 a joint conference of the [[Royal College of General Practitioners]] and the [[British Medical Association]] recommended standardisation of the system in general practice [[Electronic medical record|Electronic Medical Record (EMR)]] systems and the [[National Health Service]] mandated this in April 1999.<ref name="NHS-CfH">{{cite web |title=Frequently Asked Questions about Clinical Terms (The Read Codes) |url=http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/data/readcodes/faqs/index_html#1 |publisher=NHS Connecting for Health |access-date=2010-04-17}}</ref> The intellectual property of the codes themselves was purchased outright by the UK government, and they have therefore been published under [[Crown Copyright]] ever since.

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==Production and license==

In the 1990s the Read codes were released on a quarterly basis for clinical terms, and monthly for drugs and appliances.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Robinson |first1=David |last2=Schulz |first2=Erich |last3=Brown |first3=Philip |last4=Price |first4=Colin |title= Updating the Read Codes. User-interactive Maintenance of a Dynamic Clinical Vocabulary |journal=Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association |volume=4 |issue=6 |date=1997 |pages=465–472 |doi=10.1136/jamia.1997.0040465|pmid=9391934 |pmc=61264 |doi-access=free }}</ref> LaterlyLatterly, they were maintained by the UK Terminology Centre, a division within NHS Data Standards and Products (in turn a division of [[NHS Connecting for Health]]) and both versions were released biannually, in October and April, under the [[Open Government Licence]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://data.gov.uk/dataset/f262aa32-9c4e-44f1-99eb-4900deada7a4/uk-read-code |title=UK Read Code |website=data.gov.uk |date=24 March 2015 |publisher=[[UK Government]] |access-date=18 March 2020}}</ref>

License application, and distribution, are now electronic only via the UKTC [https://www.uktcregistration.nss.cfh.nhs.uk Terminology Reference data Update Distribution] service.

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[[Category:National Health Service]]

[[Category:Diagnosis classificationcodes]]

[[Category:General practice]]

[[Category:Clinical procedure classification]]