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<p>The National Information Board’s strategy document <em>Personalised Health and
Care 2020 </em>(published November 2014) set out the aim to support greater uptake
of the use of digital systems in health and care to create a National Health Service
paper free at the point of care by 2020. This will remove the system’s reliance on
paper and will help reduce postal service costs for the NHS.</p><p> </p><p>In the
case of appointment letters for patients the new NHS e-referral system, introduced
last year, already allows healthcare providers to choose not to send out appointment
letters, instead allowing patients to access the information directly from the NHS
e-referral system. Patients have an option to print off the details of their appointment
if they prefer to have a paper copy of the information. We expect increasing numbers
of providers will use this functionality to help contain costs.</p><p> </p><p><strong>
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