Planning, preparation and prioritisation: thinking about where to start

Key Information Summary (KIS) guidance
Scottish Government

With on average 30% of your practice population now having a KIS, there is a need to balance updating these with other competing demands on practice time. It is important to adopt a pragmatic approach which prioritises KIS reviews for the most vulnerable people and involves the wider healthcare team. We suggest two options which are detailed in the expandable sections below.

Regardless of which option you select, the following describes some other key considerations to support planning:

  • Explore what resources you have within the practice such as people and time and consider if there are more people from the extended community team that could become involved in leading these reviews.
  • Check that all members of the practice team know how to access and update the KIS.
  • The most useful KIS are usually written by the person or team who knows the patient best. Involve the whole multidisciplinary team to identify who should lead on the KIS review for that particular patient.
  • Consider how the KIS can be updated as part of the provision of routine care. For example, a nurse-led chronic disease management review is an ideal time to check consent and update information on normal peak flow readings or asthma escalation plans.
  • Consider a system that allows important hospital discharge information to be added to the KIS, for example by using a particular-coloured highlighter in docman.
  • Where possible encourage the community / district nursing team to update the KIS for people they are involved with, particularly when providing end of life care. Current functional ability, details of any package of care and key contacts can be invaluable.
  • If a member of your extended community team cannot enter information directly into KIS, ask them to complete a ReSPECT plan or regional future care planning tool, and share this securely with the practice so that relevant information can be copied and pasted into the KIS.
  • Identify someone within the administrative team to lead on coordinating KIS reviews.
  • Review dates on the special note will depend on the context, however you may want to consider aligning some KIS review dates with annual chronic disease management reviews or medication reviews.

Option 1

Prioritise reviewing the KIS for people within specific disease groups, or those with certain characteristics such as:

  • residents within care homes
  • people with significant mental health diagnoses
  • those approaching the end of life
  • those living with severe frailty or people who are housebound
  • people with advanced or progressive long term medical conditions, or
  • patients with complex polypharmacy or multiple co-morbidities.

Option 2

Prioritise people who have a KIS containing a meaningful special note, therefore eliminating the need for detailed review of some of the KIS developed in response to COVID-19:

  • use your administrative team to search and differentiate between those KIS that were created at the outset of the pandemic and which have little information to review, from those with a meaningful special note that will need to be kept up to date.
  • the GP clinical systems have search options which allow you to search for different components of a KIS, such as KIS review date and special note expiry date.