Safety Netting

What is safety netting?

Safety netting is a management strategy of patients, tests and referrals used in the context of diagnostic uncertainty in healthcare. It aims to ensure patients are monitored until signs and symptoms are explained or resolved  Cancer Research UK

The 2021/22 PCN Early Diagnosis DES requires PCNs to build on current practice to ensure a consistent approach to ‘safety-netting’ patients who have been referred urgently with suspected cancer or for further investigations to exclude the possibility of cancer.

Practices in the PCN will be required to use the relevant SNOMED codes to record:

• Delivery of safety netting for patients on urgent referral pathway for suspected cancer

PCN’s can view their data on use of the SNOMED code via the PCN dashboard.

Electronic safety netting / clinical templates

Various templates and toolkits are available within GP software to support you to implement safety netting processes.

• EMIS safety netting tool – A video user guide has been developed to support GPs
• SystmOne – Some practices use scheduled tasks and there are templates available, see the video Cancer Safety Netting using SystmOne for more details. Here is an additional article on safety netting using SystmOne.
• Ardens Fast track safety netting tool, here is an article with further details and information on how to run the template on EMIS