The Letter of Medical Necessity as Genre: Who Creates It and Who Controls It
Abstract
In this study, we analyze a small corpus of Letters of Medical Necessity and responses
to those letters through the lens of Rhetorical Genre Theory. When all parties share
an understanding of the relation between action and purpose, texts have a high probability
of fulfilling their social purposes. However, as Carolyn Miller points out, there
can be situations in which both parties in a communicative transaction believe a given
genre exists, when, in fact, different understandings of the rhetorical situation
undermine the success of that genre. Our analysis suggests that writers and evaluators
often have differing understandings of the letter of medical necessity genre. We further
find that writers of these letters, themselves, often have differing concepts of the
letters' content and form. Thus, we suggest that those writing letters of medical
necessity should engage in conversations about the needed content and form, and that
providers and evaluators foster dialogue about the genre's key features.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25115Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1109/procomm.2018.00040Publication Info
Lunsford, Christopher (2018). The Letter of Medical Necessity as Genre: Who Creates It and Who Controls It. IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2018-July. pp. 159-166. 10.1109/procomm.2018.00040. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25115.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Christopher Daniel Lunsford
Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery
Pediatric Physiatrist (Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine)Disability Advocate - Anti-Ableism
in Healthcare

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