Elmgrove Medical Practice
Referral letters summarised for the morning list
A summary step that drafts a short structured note for every referral, reviewed by the practice team before it reaches a clinician.
Elmgrove Medical Practice · Healthcare · community practice, 6 clinicians and a reception team of 8, referrals from six local surgeries
40 h
Clerical hours saved each month
2,600
Referrals summarised a year
4 weeks
From pilot to everyday use
Challenge
Elmgrove receives around fifty referrals a week from six local surgeries. They arrive as typed letters, faxes and exports from two different portals, each with its own layout, length and level of detail.
Before triage, a member of the reception team read every referral in full and copied the key details onto the morning list by hand. It took hours each week, and in a long or unclear letter it was easy to miss something important, such as current medication or the reason a referral was marked urgent.
Approach
Define the note. With the practice manager and two clinicians we agreed a short structured note: reason for referral, relevant history, current medication, stated urgency and anything missing from the letter.
Draft, never decide. The summary step reads each referral and fills in the note, quoting the original wording for anything clinical and marking fields it could not find. It does not triage or set priorities.
Review before the list. The practice team checks and edits every note next to the original letter before it reaches a clinician. The pilot covered referrals from two surgeries, and the setup was agreed with the practice's data protection lead before it went further.
Result
Four weeks after the pilot began, the summary step was part of everyday work. Clinicians start the morning list with a consistent note for every referral and the original letter one click away, and the reception team has time back for patients at the desk and on the phone.
Every note is checked by the practice team before a clinician sees it
Missing information is flagged, so the practice can ask the referring surgery early
Notes follow the same structure, whichever surgery or portal the referral came from
Every referral is still read by a person, but now we check a clear note instead of copying out a four-page letter. The morning list is ready before the first clinic starts.
Helen Marsh
Practice Manager, Elmgrove Medical Practice
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