A hospital trust in the north has rewritten its discharge letter in plain language and shortened it to a single page, with the next steps listed in order at the top.
In a three-month trial, missed follow-up appointments fell by about a fifth. Patients said the most helpful change was a single sentence explaining what to do if a symptom returned.
The trust has published the template so that other services can adapt it. “A letter is a piece of design,” said the clinician who led the trial. “We just hadn’t treated it that way.”
