California Cancer Reporting System Standards Volume I: Abstracting and Coding Procedures
A patient's full social security number is critical for the identification of multiple reports of the same cancer so that they are not counted as separate cases.
Two fields are provided:
Nine-character field for the number:
Enter the patient’s 9 digit social security number (SSN).
Make every effort to ascertain the patient's own number. Enter it and its suffix in the fields provided.
If the patient's own number cannot be determined, enter whatever number (including its suffix) available from the medical record.
Do not combine the suffix from one number with a different number.
If the social security number is not known, enter 9’s.
Military facilities 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.
The following values are not allowed:
First three digits cannot be 000 or 666
Fourth and fifth digits cannot be 00
Last four digits cannot be 0000
First digit cannot be 9 (except for 999999999)
Examples:
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 facility: 30-333-44-5555
Enter 999-99-9999.
Two-character field for a suffix:
The suffix for a patient's social security number was historically used to show the relationship of the patient to the bearer of the SSN entered (e.g. spouse).
If the suffix is only one character, leave a trailing blank space in the Suffix field.
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).
When there is no suffix, leave the two character field blank.