We write “follow up with your PCP” all the time in discharge summaries. It looks harmless enough. A patient is leaving the hospital, there are chronic issues that still exist, and someone needs to see them after discharge.
But after writing enough discharge summaries, and then reading them on the receiving end in residency clinic, I started to realize how much work we hide inside that phrase. Sometimes it means a medication was stopped. Sometimes it means a lab needs repeating. Sometimes it means a pending result needs follow-up. And sometimes it means nothing changed at all, but the problem got copied forward because every problem needed a plan.
That ambiguity creates work for the next clinician and makes the patient’s transition out of the hospital less clear than it should be.
Full breakdown in my latest Huddle+ article here.
