This case study very briefly describes how the team in Cambridge working on the Health Foundation’s Co-creating Health programme wrote to diabetes patients in advance of their annual review appointments with the results of their test to try to encourage patients to think about what they wanted to discuss at their appointment.

Whilst most patients said that they found this helpful, a small minority didn’t understand the information and wanted clearer explanations with more layman’s terms. As a result, the team have revised the form by simplifying the language and ensuring that for each test at least two historical readings are shown so that patients can see trends.