Customer notes
Practice letters to patients
Practice correspondence is constrained by something no other business on this list has to think about: the envelope itself can disclose. A note that names a condition, a department or a procedure on the outside, or that can be read through the window, is a privacy incident before anyone opens it.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
Welcoming a new patient to the practice
[FIRST NAME],
Welcome to [PRACTICE NAME]. You are with [PRACTITIONER] and reception can usually fit you in within [TIMEFRAME] if something comes up.
Two practical things: we run about ten minutes late by mid-afternoon, and parking behind the building is free after [TIME].
[NAME], Practice Manager
Thanking a referring practitioner
Between practices rather than to a patient, and the one note in healthcare with no privacy constraint to navigate - provided no patient is identifiable in it.
[FIRST NAME],
Thank you for the referrals this year. Your letters are consistently the clearest we receive, which saves us a conversation at the first appointment every time.
If there is anything about how we report back that would be more useful to you, tell me and we will change it.
[PRACTITIONER NAME]
Telling patients the practice is moving
[FIRST NAME],
[PRACTICE NAME] moves to [NEW ADDRESS] from [DATE]. Same team, same phone number, and about [DISTANCE] from where we are now.
There is more parking and the new rooms are on one level, which a lot of you have asked for over the years. Nothing changes about your appointments.
[NAME], Practice Manager
A practitioner leaving or retiring
[FIRST NAME],
[PRACTITIONER] retires at the end of [MONTH] after [NUMBER] years here.
You will be looked after by [NEW PRACTITIONER], who has been with us since [YEAR] and has access to everything needed. If you would prefer somebody else, ring reception and say so - it is no trouble and no explanation is required.
[NAME], Practice Manager
Getting it right
- What to mention. The practice name, the practitioner, and administrative facts only. Welcomes, thanks for a referral and general practice news are safe ground.
- What to leave out. Any clinical detail whatsoever, including the department, the reason for attendance and anything that implies a diagnosis. No condition names on the letter and certainly none on the envelope.
- How long. 40 to 90 words.
- How personal. Warm and plain. Clinical formality on an administrative note reads as a results letter and frightens people before they open it.
- When not to send one. Anything clinical, anything time-critical, and any recall that must be received. Those go through the practice’s own clinical channels with the audit trail that comes with them. A posted note is not a safe way to deliver something a patient must act on.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [PRACTICE NAME], [PRACTITIONER], [DATE].
Never merge a clinical field, even where the system makes it easy. The safe set is name, practitioner and practice administration, and the envelope should carry nothing beyond the practice name. Where a list is drawn from a clinical system, have somebody confirm the export contains no diagnostic column before it leaves the building.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
A practice relocation or a retiring practitioner means writing to the entire active list at once, which is thousands of letters in a fortnight for a team that does not have a mailing function.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap, hand-addresses the envelopes and inserts, collates and seals.
Writing to a whole patient list about a move? How practice mailings work
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Writing more of these than you have evenings
Tell us roughly how many and what they say. We will come back with an exact price and a production window.