5 Instances When Intake Forms May Be Necessary

Intake forms aren’t just for new patients. Onboarding is just one of the many instances where intake forms are necessary.

Your patients lives are constantly changing and those changes lead to developments in their health, both good and bad.

It’s impossible to ask enough important questions to guide a patients care in one office visit. That’s why it’s important to administer intake forms regularly. Here are five instances where intake forms may be necessary:

1. Patient Needs a Plan or Program

If a patient is struggling with a particular health issue or just can’t meet their goals, this is a great time to administer an intake form. In this instance, use a form that asks what specific struggles they’re experiencing and use this data to provide them with a care plan.

After the patient is done answering the questions on the form, you can then evaluate the issues and prescribe a plan that helps to put your care instructions into actionable steps for the patient.

For example, if the patient is having trouble sleeping, you could place them on a Sleep Hygiene Program. Or, if a patient has a chronic issue such as diabetes, you could place them on a Modern DASH diet to help educate them on healthy eating.

2. Patient Experiences a Life Change

We’re often quick to congratulate patients when they’ve experienced a major life event such as moving, graduating school, having children, getting married, etc. However, most major life events involve a lot of stress on patients.

Many times these great accomplishments mean that the patient had to put their health on the back burner. If a patient says that they’ve had a significant life change, follow this up with an intake form or questionnaire about how this life event positively or negatively affected their health.

Changes in diet, sleep patterns and even medication can take place during these pivotal life events, so these conversations should be your cue to ask more questions about your patient’s health.

3. Patient Has New Symptoms

When patients say that they’re experiencing symptoms that are cause for concern, it may be time to investigate. Intake forms are a great diagnostic tool for determining whether or not a patient has a chronic condition or determining the severity of their stated symptoms.

With the ability to customize intake forms online, you can using sliding scales, multiple choice, open ended and more formats to determine what your patient is experiencing and to what degree.

4. Changes in Medication or Medical History

Chances are you’re not the only healthcare provider a patient is seeing regularly. They’re visiting their eye doctor, dermatologist, gynecologist, etc. All of which are able to prescribe medication and/or discuss changes in their lifestyle.

While this information is often communicated to your office, it’s important to verify what happened during these visits in case there is something you’ve missed. You can ensure that any procedures or medication that may have been administered is in their record by following up with an intake form that asks questions that specifically pertain to medical history updates.

Don’t be afraid to get specific either, one generic question asking “are there any changes in your medical history?” may not be enough to jog your patients’ mind. Questions such as “have you received glasses or contacts since we last saw you?” or “are you taking any new prescription medication” are much more helpful to your patients.

5. Patient Hasn’t Seen You in a While

If you haven’t seen a patient in a while, they are not going to remember what to tell you about their health. It’s almost as if you’re starting from the beginning. Be sure to follow up on preexisting concerns with your patient while also remembering that a lot can change over the course of a few months to a year to longer.

Even if it seems redundant to the patient, it’s always better to ask the same questions over time because as we’ve established, things can always change and they often do.

Intake Form Software

Whether your patient is brand new to your practice or is experiencing any of the above situations, BodySite’s native intake form or survey generator you can collect data from patients and then enroll them on a care plan without having to leave our HIPAA compliant platform.

Once you determine what your patient’s needs are BodySite has a library of 60+ plan templates, ranging from condition specific to generic.

Take advantage of your 30 Day Free Trial here.