Immediate psychiatric discharge letters by fax

Much psychiatric care is provided outside the hospital setting. It is important for general practitioners (GPs) to have available information of good quality, provided promptly, after patients' discharges from in-patient psychiatric care to enable them to provide a high standard of follow-up care. In order to assess the value of hand-written Immediate Discharge Letters sent by fax we undertook a postal questionnaire survey of GPs, and examined a proportion of the clinical notes relating to 160 patients who between January and March 1998 had been discharged from in-patient care in the psychiatry admission wards at Crichton Royal Hospital, Dumfries. We found that structured letters, hand-written on a patient's discharge from in-patient status were generally valued by GPs as was their transmission by fax. Though certain deficiencies were confirmed in their completion, they are of value pending the arrival of a more definitive final discharge summary. We conclude that the continued use of such immediate discharge letters in psychiatry and their continued transmission by fax is justified.