Clinic letters & admin / Letter
Discharge after no response
Closing the loop when the window given in the previous letter has passed, with the re-referral route stated.
Dear [], Further to my letter of [], I have not heard from you. I very much hope that this means your symptoms have improved. I am now discharging you from the chest clinic, and I have written to your GP to let them know. If you develop any of the following, please contact your GP, who can refer you back to the chest clinic: a cough that persists or is getting worse, coughing up blood, worsening breathlessness, chest pain that is not explained, or losing weight without meaning to. If you would still like to be seen and simply have not managed to get in touch, please telephone the number below and we will help. With all best wishes, Yours sincerely,
How to use it
Send this only after a letter that gave a defined window, so the discharge is the end of a process rather than the start of one. The last paragraph exists because a proportion of people who do not respond to the first letter never received it, or could not read it, or were in hospital elsewhere; leaving the door open costs nothing. Keep the safety-netting list specific rather than writing "any respiratory symptoms", which is not actionable by the reader and will be ignored.
Why it says that
None of this is in the copied text. It is here so you can check the block against its source, and change it when the source changes.
- Academy of Medical Royal Colleges: please write to me Letters written to the patient, in the second person, with clear actions and no unexplained abbreviations.
- NICE NG12 - Suspected cancer: recognition and referral The symptoms in the safety-netting paragraph are those that should prompt urgent reassessment for possible cancer.