Administrative workload should never become a clinical issue.
A patient returns to their GP after seeing a specialist. Their medications have changed, but the specialist’s letter is not in their record. They can recall some of the discussion, but not the exact changes or the reasons for them.
The GP needs to establish which medications have been stopped or started and what follow-up is required. Before they can assess how the patient is responding, they need the details of the specialist’s advice.
Has the letter been sent? Has it reached the practice but is still waiting to be processed? Does someone need to contact the specialist’s practice to chase it up?
Tracking down the letter takes reception staff away from other tasks and uses valuable consultation time.
This is where administrative workload becomes a clinical problem. The GP’s ability to make informed decisions depends, in part, on the work that happens before the consultation.
A letter arriving at a practice does not mean it is available in the patient’s record. Someone needs to check it, match it to the right patient and file it. Practice teams do this alongside calls, enquiries and managing other documents arriving throughout the day.
These tasks can look small in isolation. However, across a busy practice, they represent a substantial amount of work.
Delays in processing can reflect the competing demands on an already busy team. The role of technology is to make that process easier, without adding another task to the team’s day.
Moving correspondence into a digital inbox is not enough if staff still have to complete the same manual tasks. Technology needs to reduce the effort involved in getting a document from that inbox into the right patient record, while keeping appropriate checks in place.
HotDoc’s Document Assistant is one example of how technology can reduce this manual work. Using AI to extract key details from letters, referrals and results, it suggests the matching patient and pre-fills filing information. Practice staff review and confirm those details before importing the documents, reducing manual data entry while retaining human oversight.
The benefit for the GP is clear. When the specialist’s letter is available, the GP can review the medication changes, understand the reasons for them and consider the
recommended follow-up. They can use the consultation to assess how the patient is managing, clarify the plan and discuss any concerns.
The consultation can focus on what those changes mean for the patient, rather than trying to establish what happened at another appointment.
Practices cannot control when a specialist sends a letter. But once it arrives, processing it should be as straightforward as possible, so avoidable administrative delays do not compound gaps in communication between providers.
The value of reducing administration should be visible in the working day: fewer manual processing steps, less searching for documents and fewer interruptions during a consultation.
For practice teams, that can mean more capacity to respond to patients and support clinicians. For GPs, it can mean being better prepared to assess a patient whose treatment has changed.
Reducing administrative demands can also make the working day more fulfilling, giving GPs more opportunity to build relationships with patients and use their clinical skills and judgement.
Providers, including HotDoc, should demonstrate these benefits when practices introduce technology, accounting for the training, checking and ongoing work involved.
The standard should be straightforward. When a patient arrives to discuss a change in their care, the systems supporting the practice should help their GP start with the clearest possible picture from the get-go.
Dr Jaspreet Saini is the Chief Medical Officer at HotDoc, and the principal GP and owner of Rosedale Medical Practice.
