[High-quality hospital discharge summaries - general practitioners expectations].

Hospital discharge summaries ensure treatment continuity after hospital discharge. In Switzerland discharge letters are a celebrated custom and a tool for training young colleagues. The primary purpose is to guarantee high-quality care of patients treated by hospital staff and general practitioners. From the perspective of the patient's general practitioner discharge summaries should convey current and accurate medically important patient data to the physician responsible for follow-up care. In the era of highly developed electronic data transfer and introduction of diagnose related groups (DRGs), it will be necessary to transmit hospital discharge information selectively to different target groups. Nevertheless data protection and medical secret must be complied with.