Safety Netting

Safety netting has attracted increasing importance as the make-up of primary care teams changes and both patients and diagnostics increase in complexity.

Safety netting is not only important to safeguard the care of our patients but to avoid potential medicolegal consequences of not having robust safety netting processes in place. This includes situations whereby ARRS roles might request diagnostics, but a lead GP has overarching clinical responsibility.

Auditable robust IT systems are recommended. The safety netting checklist below will enable practices to assess if their current processes are sufficiently robust.

The National Primary Care Safety Netting Strategy published 26th September 2024 highlights cases of delayed cancer diagnoses where safety netting may have improved patient outcome. 

The Serious Incidents Newsletter also illustrates where safety netting could help improve patient outcomes.