The General Medical Council allocates all doctors a GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL REFERENCE NUMBER on their first contact with the General Medical Council.

• If a doctor chooses to enter general practice in England or Wales, a further 6-digit number is allocated by NHS Digital. This number is referred to as the DOCTOR INDEX NUMBER.
• The DOCTOR INDEX NUMBER is passed to the requesting Clinical Commissioning Group or ORGANISATION authorised to act on their behalf who then liaise with NHS Prescription Services on the issue of prescription pads etc.
• NHS Prescription Services use the number to derive the GENERAL MEDICAL PRACTITIONER PPD CODE by prefixing it with a leading character and adding a check digit at the end.

A doctor can be both a GENERAL PRACTITIONER and a Hospital CONSULTANT, and therefore hold a DOCTOR INDEX NUMBER, GENERAL MEDICAL PRACTITIONER PPD CODE and a CONSULTANT CODE simultaneously.

For further information, see the Organisation Data Service pages of the NHS Digital website at:

• Technical guides: Standards repository guide
• GP and GP practice related data.

This attribute is also known by these names:

Context	Alias
shortname	DIN
plural	DOCTOR INDEX NUMBERS