Transfers of care and clinical correspondence
At a glance
A transfer or handover must give the receiving team the necessary, current and actionable information for a defined transition. It must also make receipt, reconciliation, follow-up, correction and clinical ownership explicit.
Return to the Out-of-PHC row or Into-PHC row.
Scope and boundaries
This family covers care summaries, handovers, care plans, clinical letters and other correspondence sent at or around a transition of care. A referral request belongs to Referrals, triage and bookings; a shared-record view does not become a transfer simply because another team can see it.
DAPB4042 governs its scoped acute inpatient or day-case discharge-to-GP leg. It does not govern all outward PHC correspondence, outpatient letters or every transfer. CLM-018
Out of primary healthcare
PHC may send a purpose-specific care summary, handover, care plan or clinical letter to the team assuming or sharing responsibility. Record the trigger, recipient, information needed now, receipt route and who owns follow-up if the transfer is rejected, delayed or incomplete.
Into primary healthcare
For an acute inpatient or day-case discharge, PHC must safely match, review and reconcile the incoming information, including medicines and actionable follow-up. Receipt into a mailbox or system is not proof of clinical review. Corrections and late or duplicate messages need a defined route.
How the requirement layers apply
| Layer | Workflow-specific position |
|---|---|
| Legislation | UK GDPR and DPA 2018 apply. An in-scope sender may have a qualified Section 251B duty, but each transfer still needs necessary content and a confidentiality route. |
| Regulations and contract | Check the executed GP contract, NHS Standard Contract requirements, commissioned pathway and any organisation-specific transfer terms. No single outward-transfer regulation covers every form of correspondence. |
| Standards | Candidate standards include the Core Information Standard, Personalised Care and Support Plan, NHS Number, SNOMED CT, UK Core FHIR, DCB0129, DCB0160 and DSPT. DAPB4042 is limited to its stated incoming acute-discharge scope. |
| Confidentiality and other controls | Apply common-law confidentiality, Caldicott, purpose-specific content selection, provenance, receipt, reconciliation, correction, onward-use limits and named clinical ownership. |
Minimum, conditional and higher assurance
- Required floor: the necessary, accurate and current information for the defined transition, with the correct recipient and clear responsibility for receipt and action.
- Conditional envelope: include only content relevant to this care transition; protect sensitive, third-party or unrelated history.
- Higher-assurance ceiling: structured, coded, acknowledged and reconciled transfer content with clear version/status, dependable correction and closed-loop follow-up.
Failure states and ownership
Test wrong-recipient messages, delayed or missing discharge, incomplete medicines, duplicate or superseded documents, failed acknowledgement, unowned follow-up, unread inboxes, attachments that cannot be opened, correction after action and downtime across sender and receiver systems.
Evidence and open checks
Maintained evidence: SRC-006, SRC-007, SRC-014, SRC-016, SRC-017, SRC-019, SRC-020, SRC-023, SRC-025, SRC-040. Confirm the current notice, organisations, roles and conformance dates through VAL-004.
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