A letter that takes longer than the appointment
A patient asks the osteopath to let their GP know about their treatment, or the osteopath thinks the GP should be informed. The osteopath opens a word document, types the practice address, looks up the patient's date of birth and NHS number, writes a summary, signs it and hands it to reception. Reception prints it, finds an envelope or looks for the practice's email address, sends it and scans a copy back into the notes.
It is a good habit and a professional courtesy. It is also twenty minutes of assembly work around five minutes of actual thinking.
Why it has not been simplified
Letters are infrequent enough that nobody has built a proper workflow, but frequent enough to add up. GP details in the record are often incomplete or out of date, so the osteopath has to search for the practice address. There is no standard template, so every letter is formatted differently. And there is no record of which letters were sent, so when a GP practice says they never received it, nobody can say when it went.
The drag on the clinic
- Clinician time spent on formatting and addresses.
- Letters that are delayed or never sent because it felt like too much work at the end of the day.
- Inconsistent letters that do not look like they come from the same clinic.
- No sent log, so follow-up questions cannot be answered.
| Letter part | Who should do it |
|---|---|
| Patient identifiers, GP address, dates | The system, from the record |
| Reason for writing and summary | The osteopath |
| Formatting, signature, letterhead | The template |
| Sending and filing a copy | The system |
How we build the letter workflow
- We write a small set of letter templates with you: a treatment update, a letter at the end of a course of care, and a request for information, for example.
- Patient details, GP practice and visit dates are pulled from your clinic software automatically.
- Where the GP practice details are missing, the system checks a list of practices your clinic has already written to, and asks reception to confirm the rest once, so it is right next time.
- The osteopath writes only the summary section. Optionally, an AI model drafts it from the osteopath's recent notes for them to edit, but it never sends anything unreviewed.
- On approval, the letter is produced as a PDF on your letterhead, sent by secure email or queued for printing, and a copy is filed to the patient record.
- A sent log records the date, recipient and method, with any bounced emails flagged to reception.
We do not tell osteopaths when to write to a GP or what to say about a patient's condition. The workflow removes the admin so the letters they already want to send actually get sent.
A small change that adds up
Reception's part shrinks to confirming a GP practice the first time it appears and dealing with the occasional bounced email. The rest of the job, which used to involve a printer, envelopes and a scanner, simply happens when the osteopath presses approve.
Letters take the time needed to write the summary and no more. They look professional and consistent. GP details improve over time as they are confirmed. When a practice asks whether a letter was sent, reception can answer with a date and method in seconds. And osteopaths who used to put off letters until they had a spare hour start sending them the same day.
Does this apply to you?
- GP letters are written in a word processor from scratch.
- GP practice addresses are searched for each time.
- Letters sit waiting to be printed or posted.
- There is no log of which letters went out when.
- Osteopaths put letters off because of the admin around them.