• Claire Hoffmire, Brady Stephens, Sybil Morley, Caitlin Thompson, Janet Kemp, and Robert M Bossarte.
• Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center for Suicide Prevention, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Denver, CO, USA.
• Public Health Rep. 2016 Nov 1; 131 (6): 816-821.

ObjectivesThe US Department of Veterans Affairs' Suicide Prevention Applications Network (SPAN) is a national system for suicide event tracking and case management. The objective of this study was to assess data on suicide attempts among people using Veterans Health Administration (VHA) services.MethodsWe assessed the degree of data overlap on suicide attempters reported in SPAN and the VHA's medical records from October 1, 2010, to September 30, 2014-overall, by year, and by region. Data on suicide attempters in the VHA's medical records consisted of diagnoses documented with E95 codes from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision.ResultsOf 50 518 VHA patients who attempted suicide during the 4-year study period, data on fewer than half (41%) were reported in both SPAN and the medical records; nearly 65% of patients whose suicide attempt was recorded in SPAN had no data on attempted suicide in the VHA's medical records.ConclusionEvaluation of administrative data suggests that use of SPAN substantially increases the collection of data on suicide attempters as compared with the use of medical records alone, but neither SPAN nor the VHA's medical records identify all suicide attempters. Further research is needed to better understand the strengths and limitations of both systems and how to best combine information across systems.

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