Table 1 Study inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria

• Patient documents that take a form of written discharge communication – this may include but is not necessarily limited to inpatient or outpatient discharge letters and discharge summaries.

• Cases whereby the patient was discharged to primary care from one of the participating hospices.

• Discharge communications between October 2019 and February 2020*.

*If there are more than 50 letters within the sampling period, the 50 most recent should be selected, and if there are fewer, then the time period should be extended until 50 is reached.

Exclusion criteria

• Discharge documents to non-primary care services.

• Documents that relate to patients under 18 years of age.

• Documents relating to patients who have requested their records are not used for research.