Form Structure Best Practices for AI Scribe
The structure and organization of your charting forms directly impacts the accuracy of AI Scribe output. This guide covers the structural principles that help Scribe fill your forms correctly.
For a full overview of how to configure Scribe — including Custom Instructions, field types, and troubleshooting — see the AI Scribe Configuration Guide.
AI Scribe sees your form structure exactly as you've built it. If the structure is confusing to a human, it will be confusing to Scribe. Every field label and placeholder you write is input the AI uses to decide what to document.
Form Structure Best Practices
1. One question, one field
Avoid using header fields with unlabeled text boxes below them. Scribe reads each field by its label — an unlabeled field gives it nothing to work with.
❌ Incorrect:
Field 1 (Header): "SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT" Field 2 (Text — no label): [empty text box]
✅ Correct:
Field 1 (Text): "Subjective assessment — patient's reported concerns, symptoms, and experiences from today's session"
2. Use descriptive field labels
Your field labels act as instructions to Scribe. Vague labels produce vague output.
❌ Vague: Notes , Assessment , Update
✅ Specific:
Document specific therapeutic interventions used today and client responses to eachClient's self-reported mood and anxiety, using their own wordsProgress toward treatment goals established in previous sessions
For detailed label-writing guidance, see Writing Effective Form Labels.
3. Organize fields logically
Group related fields together. Logical organization helps Scribe understand the context of each field and reduces mis-fills.
4. Use placeholder text for structured output
For fields that need a specific layout — bullet lists, dated entries, multi-part sections — model the structure in the placeholder text. The AI treats the placeholder as a formatting template.
Important: Bullet and list formatting cannot be controlled via Custom Instructions. If you want structured output in a field, configure it in the placeholder.
5. Use the right field type
Field type determines how Scribe interacts with existing content. See How AI Scribe Handles Different Field Types for the full reference.
Quick guide:
- Fresh each visit → Standard field
- Build on previous notes → Pre-fill field
- Rarely changes, may need updating → Copied field
- From the patient profile → Smart field
Excluding Fields from Scribe
Any field can be excluded from Scribe using the "Exclude Field from Scribe" checkbox in the Form Builder. When excluded, the field is hidden from the AI entirely — not just instructed to skip it.
Use this for fields that should never be auto-filled, such as administrative, billing, or consent fields. See the AI Scribe Configuration Guide for more detail.
Modifying Form Templates After Notes Exist
Modifying a charting template after Scribe has already generated notes can cause fields to disappear from those existing notes.
Scribe-generated notes store a snapshot of the form at generation time. If you delete a field from the template, that field will no longer display in previously generated Scribe notes — even though the data exists.
Workaround: Convert Scribe-generated notes to chart notes before modifying the template. Once converted, the note references the live template and field data is preserved regardless of future template changes.