Writing letters and referrals
You can write letters and referrals from a patient's clinical record. You can also
write letters from Documents and Results or from .
A document can be sent to only one recipient. After it has been sent, the document, recipient, sender and patient details cannot be changed, however, the document can be sent again.
If you want to provide patient-specific information in a
letter or referral, create it from the clinical record: click Letter. Encounter place and mode, patient details, and
provider details are filled in automatically.
- Select
- Select Outgoing Documents tab,
click
Write a new letter
, and on the - Click
Documents and Results and on the Outgoing Documents tab, click
Write a new letter

-
In the patient's clinical record, click
Letter.
-
In the Select Document Template window, select a letter
template in the list and click Select. For example,
select Antenatal Care Record for a referral, select
Referral Letter (Standard).
Encounter place and mode, patient details, and provider details are filled in automatically, except if you use the blank letter template.
- If you selected a referral template, in the Address Book, select an addressee.
-
Compose or edit the letter or referral:
- To insert links to web pages, documents, images and local network folder
shares to tie patient documents to other resources, click
or select .
Note:Communicare will try to open the hyperlink target using the default viewing application. If a default application does not exist, choose the best program with which to open the link target from the Open With window. - To insert images, click
Picture or select . Communicare supports the following image file types in letters: JPEG (*.jpeg), Windows Bitmap (*.bmp), Icon files (*.ico), Windows Metafiles (*.emf;*.wmf), and GIF (*.gif).
- To spell check the letter, click
.
- To insert links to web pages, documents, images and local network folder
shares to tie patient documents to other resources, click
-
Add patient-specific information from the right-hand pane:
- Either double-click or drag an item onto the letter.
- To insert clinical information, expand Clinical
Record and select the required item. For example, to
insert the latest BP into the Antenatal Care Record:
- With the cursor in the BP field, select .
- In the Qualifier Type window, in the Locate field, enter BP.
- Select BP - Diastolic Blood Pressure and click Select. The most recent value is inserted into the letter.
- Repeat steps a-c for BP - Systolic Blood Pressure.
- Some items will prompt you for information, such as:
- - select CTRL+click to select multiple results
- - select and preview one note at a time
- To insert
drawings attached to a clinical item:
- Select Clinical Record and double-click Latest Qualifier.
- In the Qualifier Type window, in the
Locate field, enter a drawing
qualifier, for example Drawing:body (front and
back).
The drawing and a key including annotations are added to the letter. For more information about drawings, see Add drawings to clinical items.
- From the Topic field, select an appropriate topic. Documents are filed with a Class type of Document and can be found under the Topic tab that you select.
- In the Comment field, enter a useful comment. You can later use the comment to search for a specific letter without having to open each letter in turn.
-
Either print the letter or send it electronically, or both:
- To print the letter only, click
Print and Save.
- To send the letter electronically only:
- Select an addressee if you have not already: in the Outgoing pane, double-click in the To field and select an addressee.
- Click
Send Secure.
- To print the letter and leave the window open to also send electronically:
- Check the layout, click
Print Preview.
- Click
Print.
- Check the layout, click
- To print the letter only, click
- Click Save.
Letters and
referrals are sent securely as PDFs when CCareQueue_SMD
next runs. Outgoing documents are saved to
C:\CCare\Communicare\out_doc and are displayed on tab.

Saved letters are printed to PDF.
If you entered a useful topic and comment, the letter can be easily retrieved from the Detail tab of the clinical record. Documents have a Class type of Document and can be found under the Topic tab that you specified.
Action | Error if recipient cannot receive the message |
---|---|
Create a referral and send as a letter | The selected recipient cannot receive this document type |
Create a referral and send as eReferral | Communicare cannot send CDA eReferrals via secure messaging |
- Incoming documents will always open in read-only with no prompt.
- For other read only documents, either:
- View the document as it is without being able to change the data in it.
- Create a copy of the document with the same data that you can edit. The old document will not be overwritten or lost.
- For editable documents:
- View the existing document - this will open the document but not allow any changes to be made.
- Modify the existing document as it is.
- Create a copy of the document with the same information in it that you can edit. The old document will not be overwritten or lost.