An audit of the standard of response letters sent by hospital specialists to general dental practitioners following a referred patient's first appointment.

Introduction: To assess the standard of response letters issued by dental hospital departments according to the requirements of the recipient dentists.

Patients And Methods: A cross-sectional survey from a UK dental hospital. All response letters issued from hospital departments between 1 January and 1 March 2003 were copied. Fifteen letters were selected for each department on a chronological sampling frame. The hospital response letters were compared to dentists' requirements, as determined in a previous study.

Results: Almost all departments achieved a minimum total score of 80%. The scores across all of the departments together achieved over 90% for all items of information except those relating to time. The samples of the three departments to score over 90% were the only ones to include SHO letters. The sample of the department with the highest score contained the most SHO letters and no consultant letters.

Conclusions: The content standard of response letters was consistently high, particularly those letters written by SHOs, and most were written within 18 days of the patient's appointment. The use of a previously conducted questionnaire survey of dentists' opinions provided a valid means of assessing the quality of the response letters from hospital specialists.