California Cancer Reporting System Standards Volume I: Abstracting and Coding Procedures for Hospitals
A patient's full social security number is critical for identification of multiple reports of the same cancer so that they are not counted as separate cases. It is the responsibility of the cancer registrar to ensure full access to the patient's social security number.
Two fields are provided: a nine-character field for the number and a two-character field for a suffix. If the suffix is only one character, leave a trailing blank space in the Suffix field. The medical record might contain the patient's actual social security number, or a Medicare claim number with a suffix indicating the patient's relationship to the wage earner or primary beneficiary/claimant, or both. (The suffix A, for example, indicates that the patient is the wage earner or primary beneficiary/claimant and the social security number is the patient's.) Make every effort to ascertain the patient's own number. Enter it and its suffix in the fields provided.
All efforts should be made to obtain a patient's full social security number. However, if only a partial social security number is obtained, it should be entered as 999999999. Document the actual partial social security number in the Remarks text field.
If the patient's own number cannot be determined, enter whatever number (including its suffix) is available from the medical record. Do not combine the suffix from one number with a different number. When not entering a suffix, leave the two character field blank. If the social security number is not known, enter 9’s. Military hospitals use the sponsor's social security number plus a numeric prefix as the clinic number or medical record number. Disregard such a number when entering the social security number and suffix, but enter it in the Medical Record Number field when appropriate. See Section III.2.2 for instructions.
The following values are not allowed:
Social security number from face sheet: 111-22-3333
Medicare claim number: 123-45-6789B
Enter 111-22-3333.
Social security number from face sheet: 222-33-4444D5
No other numbers recorded in chart.
Enter 222-33-4444D5.
Social security number from face sheet: not recorded
Clinic record number at Air Force hospital: 30-333-44-5555
Enter 999-99-9999.