Special Patient Notes (SPNs) are used to describe information recorded about patients with complex health and social care needs.
They are recorded by GPs to ensure the right information is available to the right people. This is especially important for out of hours services who are unlikely to have any prior knowledge of the patient that they need to assess. SPNs can show whether patient is a risk to themselves or others, whether they are at risk from others or are unable to manage their own care.
Our Specialist Dataset provides a real time view of a GP record with SPN notes. This can be integrated with any system and allows clinicians to view all the available information about a patient within their day to day application.
What’s included?
Our SPN Dataset provides a specialist view of data which is made up of specific coded entries. Typically information is presented under separate tabs and viewed alongside the categories of data provided by the Detailed Care Record.
SPN data is listed under three categories:
Care information
This section provides clinicians with an overview of all the services involved in a patient’s care and any chronic disease management observations. It also shows DNAR and palliative care notifications as well as SPN requests from out of hours clinicians to the GP.
Concerns
This section provides a view of mental health concerns, falls and any other concerns. It also records any safeguarding issues for both adults and children.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information is used to highlight any personality traits, social behaviors or triggers presented by the patient. These should be acknowledged in clinical decision making and could include violent or aggressive tendencies, drug seeking, whether they are a frequent attender or if there is a communication barrier.
What are the benefits?
Providing access to the SPN Dataset will help to improve communication between GPs and out of hours health professionals. It will ensure they have the most recent and detailed information about the patient, which will improve safety, make it easier to manage challenging situations and provide more satisfying clinical encounters.
More information
For more information about how this data could support your healthcare professionals, get in touch here.
