Tutorial ID | T-18 |
Section | Preparing a Case/Reviewing the case |
Title | Adding and Using Notes in Episodes and Cases |
Subtitle | Use notes to capture additional info without letting them become part of the record. |
Before You Begin
You have pages or staples with episodes you want to add notes to.
Note — a rich text note that adds detail or context to an episode. It might be a summary of the episode, a calculation total, a screenshot highlighting key information, or just a few key points worth flagging.
It is possible to organize your episode notes into a chronology report to quickly review it.
Click Chronology, then click Episode to see the list of all episodes with corresponding notes.
What You Will Accomplish
By the end of this tutorial, you will know how to write clear, useful notes — what information belongs in them, and what doesn't.
Why Does this Tutorial Matter
A well-written note lets you open an episode and immediately grasp what matters. Used well, notes turn a slow re-read into a five-second glance. Careless notes tend to fail in one of two ways: they say too little, or they say too much — and start sounding like the record itself.
What to Do if Something Goes Wrong
The list below covers the most common problems with notes. Each entry follows the same pattern: what you'll notice, why it likely happened, and how to fix it.
Problem: A note is written in a way that no one else can tell what it means.
Likely cause: The note made sense to the person who wrote it in the moment, but it was never written with a future reader.
Example: A note simply reads: "check this." Weeks later, neither the original author nor the other person can tell what needed checking, why it mattered, or whether it was ever resolved.
Fix:
Write each note as if another person with no context will read it.
Lead with the point that matters most in the episode, so it's immediately clear what the note is flagging.
Include only the key facts.
Reread the note after writing it, and check that it would still make sense without you there to explain it.
Problem: A note references a screenshot or attachment that's no longer visible in the episode's records.
Likely cause: An episode often summarizes information drawn from several pages. A note created after the episode was set up may include screenshots or text pulled from more than one of those pages — not just one. If a page is later removed from the episode, the note still holds onto information that came from it, even though the source is now gone.
Example: A note reads: "Totals: $500," but no bill is attached to the note — the page it was originally drawn from has since been removed from the episode or replaced with a corrected version showing a different total.
Fix:
Before relying on a note's information, confirm the pages it was drawn from are still part of the episode.
If you can't confirm the note's information against the current records, a page it depended on has likely been removed or replaced.
Delete any part of the note that you can no longer verify against the episode's records.
Going forward, check for notes that depend on a page before removing that page from an episode.
Problem: Too much information is packed into a note, so the key points get lost.
Likely cause: A reviewer treats the note field as a place to record everything about the episode, rather than several facts that actually matter.
Example: A note on a surgical episode runs eight sentences, walking through the full history of the patient's prior treatment and a general summary of the procedure — with the one important flag ("date discrepancy between operative report and billing record — needs review") buried in the middle of the fourth sentence.
Fix:
Lead with the most important point the note needs to convey.
Keep background or supporting detail brief or leave it out.
If a note covers more than one distinct point, break it into separate paragraphs so each idea is easy to find.
Summary
Notes in your case now stay clearly separated from the source record, properly attributed, and resolved before anything is shared or exported.