"Sure, Let's See What You Got": A Qualitative Analysis of Healthcare Provider Letters Used in Court Proceedings.

Background: Formerly incarcerated individuals face a host of social and medical barriers to reintegrating sustainably into society. The potential role of medical provider input in these individuals' criminal-legal involvement through providing information via letters has yet to be explored.

Objective: To examine the role of provider letters in court proceedings for criminal-legally involved patients.

Design: Retrospective chart review for patients who received provider letters and qualitative analysis of court transcripts that correlate with the timing of said letters.

Participants: Any patient enrolled in the primary care clinic with a record of a customizable provider letter documented in the electronic health record (EHR).

Main measures: Themes and subthemes from court transcripts for primary care patients with criminal-legal involvement who had provider letters written on their behalf.

Key results: Customizable provider letters that provide information about the medical and social circumstances of patients were acceptable documents to legal professionals in a court setting and found to hold relevant data referenced in judicial decision-making.

Conclusions: Overall, this study has important implications for the role that healthcare providers can play in the judicial process for their patients. This study highlights a novel area for providing provider insight in a court setting, thus improving the comprehensiveness of healthcare for criminal-legally involved patients. Customizable provider letters are accepted methods for providing useful information in a court setting and are a tool at the intersection of health and justice that deserves further study and scaling.