Improving doctors letters

• Information contained in letters of referral and reply often does not meet the information needs of letter recipients. • Missing reports of previous investigations and insufficient detail in the referral letter to specialists are the most serious and common problems. • General practitioners prefer structured, computer generated letters to unstructured, dictated letters. • Referring surgeons and GPs identify delay in receiving the reply letter and insufficient detail as relatively common problems after a new patient consultation. They want the reply letter to describe the proposed treatment, expected outcomes and any psychosocial concerns, yet these items are often omitted. • A letter content and format prompt card has the potential to enhance the quality of correspondence between medical specialists and referring doctors. • Specialist medical bodies should consider preparing prompt cards (setting out preferred information content and format for letters) to distribute to their members.