Systematic process to determine clinical harm from delayed communication between primary and secondary healthcare (1 June 2022)

Summary

Timely written communication between primary and secondary healthcare providers is paramount to ensure effective patient care. In 2020, there was a technical issue between two interconnected electronic patient record (EPR) systems that were used by a large hospital trust and the local community partners. The trust provides healthcare to a diverse multiethnic inner-city population across three inner-city London boroughs from two extremely busy acute district general hospitals. Consequently, over a four-month period, 58,521 outpatient clinic letters were not electronically sent to general practitioners following clinic appointments. This issue affected 27.9% of the total number of outpatient clinic letters sent during this period and 42,251 individual patients.

This paper from Patel et al. describes the structure, methodological process, and outcomes of the review process established to examine the harm that may have resulted due to the delay.

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