The intake form process sets the foundation for the professional relationship between your new client and your nutrition practice. It’s an essential step where important demographic, financial and health information is captured from your client, and where clients sign-off on legally required policies. Besides, traditional methods of sending new client paperwork via email in PDF or word docs, requires clients to print, fill out, sign, scan and upload their paperwork. This process is time-consuming for both you, and your new client, resulting in most clients not completing their forms before your initial session.

The Healthie platform provides you with the tools to create and assign new client paperwork to an automated intake flow. When new clients are added to your account, they will automatically be given access to view, complete and e-sign intake forms, via their Healthie client portal.

By automating the intake paperwork process, your nutrition practice can expect to:

• Save time by automating the onboarding experience
• Improve client compliance with form completion via gentle prompts to complete paperwork pre-appointment
• Establish a professional way to distribute and collect private health information
• Capture important client information and signatures (ie financial information and signed cancellation policy forms) to reduce no-shows or late cancellations for initial (and follow-up) sessions  
• Gain valuable insights into your clients nutritional concerns, by viewing completed intake forms prior to initial sessions.

This article provides a deep-dive review of utilizing the Healthie platform to customize automated intake flows, including how to:  

• Use the Healthie form builder to create your own forms to suit your practice and client needs (or leverage standard forms within Healthie)
• Customize the intake flow (onboarding experience) for each client group you create
• Remind clients to complete their paperwork pre-session
• Preview your client’s onboarding experience
• View a client’s paperwork at any time by visiting their chart

Onboarding New Clients: Creating and Automating your Intake Paperwork

1. Create your intake forms within Healthie

For your convenience, you will find a library of forms within Healthie to leverage as you build out your intake form system. Then you are able to use these forms “as is” or pull specific questions from these question banks to create your own forms.

How to get started with your new client paperwork:

1. Healthie library has common intake forms which our providers can leverage – you can add these to your account directly (see below for examples)
2. Leverage forms from your graduate, affiliate, or specialty program (e.g., IFNA, LEAP, IIN, FMCA) – Healthie can add these specialty forms to your account
3. Build your own forms with Healthie’s Form Builder
4. E-mail your forms to hello@gethealthie.com for our team to build them on your behalf

Forms that are pre-loaded to your Healthie account:  

• Healthie Smart Form: collect basic client information like Name & Address, Phone Number, and Health history. Information from the Healthie Smart Form automatically pre-fills into other parts of your platform, like the client profile. This basic intake form includes the most common questions asked by health and wellness providers. To use the Smart Form as a foundation for your own intake form, click on Healthie Smart Form
• HIPAA Privacy Policy
• Billing: request a client’s credit credit card be kept on file.
• Insurance info: request that a client enter their insurance information – you can use this for an eligibility check, and information will  auto-fill into any CMS-1500 forms you’d like to generate in the future.
• Physician Authorization of Release: obtain informed consent to contact and share information with your client’s doctor. For insurance-based practices, you may want to have this as a standard policy for obtaining chart notes and verifying diagnoses.
• Additional Sample Policy Form Templates: for additional forms you may want to leverage, download sample templates here

Please note: We recommend consulting with a lawyer, to make sure that your individual practice needs are covered, before using any legal form within the platform.

2. Create an “Intake Flow,” for your client group

Once you have your forms created, you can assign them to an intake flow. Next, you can create ONE intake flow within Healthie for multiple client groups, or customize each intake flow for every group.

For example, if you see clients for nutrition counseling and for personal training, you will likely want to create two different client groups in Healthie, and customize the intake paperwork for each group (ie. assign different waive/policy forms for each group).

Another example, is if you work with different patient populations (ie. hormone imbalances and weight loss clients), you can organize these clients into two different groups, but assign the same intake flow process to both.

Typical materials included in an intake flow:

• Welcome email (with the option of an introductory video)
• New client registration form
• Important policy forms (HIPAA Privacy agreement, Financial Agreement, Telehealth Consent Form, Cancellation Policy)
• Nutrition/Health assessment form (detailed nutrition/health history)

3. Request Form Completion and View Completed Forms  

Subsequently, as a provider, you are able to view your client’s profile, and clearly see the status of each form’s completion prior to your session (Not completed, Skipped, Incomplete, Completed). Gently nudge a client to complete their paperwork by “requesting form completion.” Also, you can use this option to request a client complete any additional forms in the future.

View completed forms within their profile, and make edits as appropriate during your nutrition session together (ie. perhaps a client wants to elaborate on a question, or they accidentally filled out incorrect information).

Your Clients Experience with Automated Intake Forms:

On the other side, the onboarding experience for your client is a critical first step in your working relationship. Here’s a walk-through of what your client will experience, step-by-step, as they go through the automated intake flow process. Customize each step to reflect your wellness brand.

1. Your client will receive a welcome email to the platform, with prompts to set-up their Healthie client login
2. They then will receive an email with a link to complete their new client paperwork
3. Paperwork can be completed electronically from their desktop or mobile device (within their web browser, not through the mobile app)
4. As clients fill out their forms, they can complete or “save and finish later”  
5. If you’ve shared any additional documents (ie. any new client resources, handouts or education materials that you’ve created), they will receive a notification that they have new documents to view

Best Practices for Creating an Intake Flow in Healthie

In conclusion, when you go through the process of creating your intake paperwork and assigning them to an intake flow, we recommend you keep the following best practices in mind. These tips will ensure a convenient and branded experience for your new clients.

• Create your new client initial assessment form as a charting template within Healthie. This will allow you to streamline charting during your initial session.
• Assign multiple client groups to one intake flow to save time. “Copy” an existing intake flow and edit it as needed, as opposed to creating new intake flows from scratch.
• Make certain forms “skippable” and others “required”
• Customize the automatic emails that clients receive. To preview and edit emails, go to the top right settings “wheel” from your dashboard > EMAILS
• Add a welcome video to share with clients to introduce them to your practice, and to the Healthie platform. Upload your video to Youtube or Vimeo, and include the link within your welcome email and/or your new client form. For detailed guidance on adding videos to forms, view this help article.
• Create a branded experience by adding your logo to your intake forms.

For Healthie Members: here’s our list of resources to support your wellness practice on the Healthie platform

Creating an intake flow for clients to complete

Creating intake forms for clients to complete online

Intake forms available within Healthie

Introduction: Intake Forms & Intake Flows

Forms in Healthie’s Specialty Library

Request that an existing client complete a form

Viewing client intake forms

Building an E-signature form

Best practices: Eliminating intake forms for a Discovery Call Client

Switching a charting template to an intake form

Generate a PDF of an intake form / charting note

Collecting Insurance information

Make an intake form “skippable” within an intake flow

Add logo to intake form

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