Allied Health Referral Letters: What GPs Need and How to Write Them
By The Kitt Team
What GPs Need from a Referral Letter (and Why Format Matters)
A good referral letter answers two questions fast: why are you writing, and what do you want. The five components that make a letter useful are a clear reason for writing, relevant findings and assessment, treatment provided and outcomes, a specific request or recommendation, and your contact details. Keep it concise. Keep it skimmable.
GPs read dozens of letters every week. Most get skimmed, not read. That’s not a criticism; it’s the reality of a busy general practice, and your letter lands in a pile alongside specialist reports, discharge summaries, and pathology results. If the GP can’t find the reason and the ask within the first few lines, they’ll move on to the next one.
Think of it as a professional handover, not a clinical note. The GP doesn’t need your full subjective and objective; they need the reason, the relevant detail, and the ask.
Under Medicare’s chronic disease management plan framework, allied health clinicians also have a formal reporting obligation back to the referring GP at multiple points in the episode of care. So you’ll write these letters more than once per patient. Getting the format right pays off quickly.
How to Structure an Allied Health Referral Letter
Structure matters more than length. A clear, skimmable letter with five labelled sections serves the GP far better than two pages of dense prose. Each section needs to do the following.
Reason for Writing
Open with one sentence that tells the GP exactly why you’re writing. Identify the patient, your role, and the context: are you reporting on a completed episode of care, requesting further investigation, or flagging a clinical matter that warrants their attention? This line sets up the rest of the letter. Make it work.
Relevant Findings and Assessment
Give the GP the clinical picture in two to four sentences. Use measurable findings where you have them: range of motion measurements, outcome measure scores, strength assessments, functional changes observed. The same specificity that makes a good SOAP note makes this section credible. Vague descriptions don’t give the GP anything to act on. “Patient reports improvement” tells them far less than “Oswestry Disability Index score improved from 52% to 28% over six sessions.”
Treatment Provided and Outcomes
Summarise what you did and how the patient responded. Keep it tight. The GP doesn’t need every technique or modality in detail; they need to know the approach, the duration, and whether it worked. If there were barriers to progress or treatment-limiting factors, note them here briefly.
Your Specific Request or Recommendation
This is the most important section, and it’s the one most often buried or left vague. State exactly what you want the GP to do: order imaging, consider a medication review, extend the care plan, refer to a specialist. One clear sentence is better than three hedged ones. The GP should be able to read this section and act on it immediately.
Who to Contact
Include your full name, your role (physiotherapist or accredited exercise physiologist), your clinic name, phone number, and email. If the GP has a question or wants to discuss the case, make it easy to reach you. A letter with no clear contact details creates unnecessary friction.
Referral Letter Template: A Copy-Ready Skeleton
Use this structure for any allied health referral letter. Fill in the bracketed sections and adjust the clinical content to match your patient. The structure stays the same each time; only the clinical detail changes.
[Your clinic letterhead, name, and contact details] Date: [DD/MM/YYYY]
To: [GP name] Practice: [Practice name, address]
Re: [Patient name, DOB, Medicare number if relevant]
Reason for writing [State clearly why you’re writing. For example: “I am writing to provide a progress report following completion of a physiotherapy programme under a GPCCMP referral” or “I am writing to request further investigation for persistent right shoulder pain that has not resolved with conservative management.”]
Relevant findings and assessment [Key objective findings: range of motion measurements, outcome measure scores, strength testing results, functional deficits observed. Use measurable terms where possible. Two to four sentences.]
Treatment provided and response [Summarise the intervention: approach, frequency, duration. Note how the patient responded and any significant changes in function or symptoms. If progress was limited, note what contributed to this.]
Request or recommendation [Be specific. For example: “I recommend imaging of the right shoulder given persistent impingement signs on assessment” or “I recommend an extension of the care plan to allow for further sessions focused on progressive loading.”]
Contact [Your full name] [Your role: Physiotherapist / Accredited Exercise Physiologist] [Clinic name, address, phone, email]
This referral letter template works equally well for initial reports, progress updates, and end-of-episode summaries. The five-section format holds regardless of the clinical context.
Common Mistakes in GP Referral Letters
Most letters that don’t get acted on share the same problems. They’re worth knowing so you can avoid them.
Too long and not skimmable. A two-page letter with no clear sections forces the GP to search for the information they need. Use short paragraphs, label your sections, and cut anything that doesn’t directly serve the reason or the ask.
No clear ask. If you haven’t told the GP exactly what you want them to do, they’ll do nothing. The request or recommendation needs to be explicit. Implied asks don’t get actioned.
Vague findings. “Patient has made good progress” is not a clinical finding. Give the GP a number, a test result, or a functional outcome they can understand and document. That level of specificity is what makes your letter credible and actionable.
Assuming the GP remembers the patient. They may not. Identify the patient by name, date of birth, and the reason they’re under your care. Don’t assume the GP recalls the referral context from six weeks ago, or that they even wrote the referral themselves.
Jargon and abbreviations the GP won’t recognise. You know what ACLR, PRI, or KOOS stand for. The GP might not. Use plain language or spell out abbreviations on first use. A letter full of unexplained acronyms loses credibility fast, and the GP won’t follow up to ask what you meant.
GPCCMP and the Medicare Context for Allied Health Referral Letters
From 1 July 2025, the GP Chronic Condition Management Plan (GPCCMP) replaced the older GPMP and TCA. Under the GPCCMP, the GP writes a letter of referral to the allied health clinician, similar in form to a specialist referral. The old formal requirement for the allied health clinician to accept the referral and have documented input into the plan has been removed.
The referral letter from the GP does not need to name you specifically. Physiotherapist or exercise physiologist is sufficient, and the letter does not need to specify a number of visits. What it does do is trigger your reporting obligation.
Under a GPCCMP referral, you have a written reporting obligation to the referring GP: a report after the first service, a report after the last service, and a report any time a clinical matter arises that the GP would reasonably expect to be told about. That’s not optional paperwork. It’s a condition of the arrangement, and it’s one of the reasons having a solid letter format matters practically: you’ll use it repeatedly across the same patient episode.
For a full explanation of how Medicare care plans for allied health work under the GPCCMP, including the referral process and what’s changed from the previous model, that article covers the mechanism in detail.
Kitt is an AI clinical assistant built for Australian allied health clinicians. If the reporting obligation under a GPCCMP is adding to your documentation burden, Kitt can draft GP letters and referral letters directly from your session notes for you to review, edit and approve, so you’re not building each one from scratch. Kitt handles documentation, not billing; it’s not a practice management system.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should an allied health referral letter include?
A well-structured allied health referral letter includes five sections: the reason for writing, relevant clinical findings and assessment, treatment provided and outcomes, a specific request or recommendation, and your contact details. Keep it concise and skimmable. The GP needs to find the reason and the ask quickly, without having to read the whole letter to work out what you want.
How long should a referral letter to a GP be?
One page is the target for most letters. Two pages is acceptable if the clinical picture is genuinely complex or you’re summarising a long episode of care. Anything longer risks the most important information being missed. Use short, labelled sections rather than flowing prose to keep it manageable.
What is the difference between a referral letter and a GP report?
A GP referral letter typically refers to the letter the GP writes to send a patient to a specialist or allied health clinician. A report to the GP is the letter you write back: to update them on assessment, treatment, or to make a clinical request. In practice, “referral letter” gets used loosely for both directions. The five-section format in this article works for either.
Do I need to write to the GP under a GPCCMP referral?
Yes. Under the GPCCMP, physiotherapists and exercise physiologists have a formal reporting obligation to the referring GP. You need to write after the first service, after the last service, and when a clinical matter arises that the GP would reasonably expect to know about. These reports are a condition of the Medicare arrangement, not optional correspondence.
Can I use a referral letter template?
Yes, and you should. A referral letter template keeps your letters consistent, reduces the chance of missing a required section, and cuts the time you spend on each one. The skeleton in this article covers the five sections that matter. Adapt the clinical content to each patient and keep the structure the same every time.
What is a GP referral letter for physiotherapy?
A GP referral letter for physiotherapy is a written report from the treating physiotherapist to the referring GP. It follows the standard five-section format: reason for writing, clinical findings, treatment and outcomes, a specific request or recommendation, and contact details. Under a GPCCMP, it also satisfies the formal reporting requirement that applies after the first service, the last service, and at any point a clinical matter warrants it.
Key Takeaways
- A good referral letter has five sections: reason for writing, clinical findings, treatment and outcomes, a specific request, and contact details.
- GPs are time-poor; make the reason and the ask obvious within the first few lines.
- Use measurable findings. Vague descriptions like “patient is improving” don’t give the GP anything to act on.
- Always identify the patient fully. The GP may not remember the referral context from weeks earlier, or may not have written the referral themselves.
- From 1 July 2025, the GPCCMP means the GP sends a referral letter to you, and you have a formal written reporting obligation back to the GP after the first service, the last service, and when a clinical matter warrants it.
- The old formal requirement for allied health clinicians to accept the referral has been removed under the GPCCMP.
- A consistent referral letter template cuts your documentation burden and reduces the chance of missing a required section across a patient episode.
- Clear, prompt letters to the GP build the kind of professional relationship that benefits your patients over the long term.