Patient forms can automatically update certain fields in the patient’s record, saving time for admins and users on the account. When a patient fills out a form containing connected questions, the information will be applied to their profile which reduces administrative work and ensures patient records stay up to date.

In this guide, we'll detail:

You can customise your form templates so that certain questions in a form can be connected to the patient record.

The following questions can be connected to form templates and will update the patient record every time a new form is submitted with updated information:

*Custom patient fields are customisable details that you can create in your settings to be recorded within the patient profile. Check out our guide about custom patient fields here.

An administrator or power receptionist can head to Settings → Patients → Patient form templates to create new or edit existing form templates.

When creating or editing a form template, there's an add connected question button within a section:

A question will not update the fields within a patient's profile. A connected question will update the corresponding field within the patient's record. You can select from the dropdown menu to choose the fields you want the patient to complete:

Hit save template after you've added all your questions and connected questions.

To ensure that only the correct patient is making changes to their profile, a verification step is required before the form is shown.

If the patient's profile has both a last name and date of birth, they will be prompted to enter these details before they're allowed to access the form:

If these match what's in their profile, they can proceed with completing the form. They'll then see a pre-filled form that has information from their record that they can update if necessary.

If the patient profile does not have a date of birth, the system will revert to the standard form behaviour. This means patient-connected questions won’t be pre-filled, and their responses won’t update the profile. The questions will act as standard questions but the completed form can still be accessed from the patient's forms folder.

Users (with the exception of Bookkeepers and Schedulers) can vet through the form and manually allow the changes to go through to the record:

If a patient is unable to pass the verification step, it’s likely because the last name and/or date of birth they entered don't match what’s recorded in Cliniko. This could be due to an error in their entry or incorrect details in their patient record.

In this case, please check with the patient to confirm the correct spelling of their last name as well as the date of birth. Review and update their details in Cliniko if necessary. Once the correct information is entered into their profile, they should be able to complete the verification process successfully.

For security reasons, if a patient enters the wrong details 5 times in a row, the form will be locked.

When this happens, you’ll see a Locked badge next to the form in the patient’s forms folder:

To unlock it, click into the form and select Show details at the top:

You'll then be able to review the incorrect information that the patient entered and check this against their actual last name and DOB. You can also hit Unlock at the bottom to let them attempt to fill the form again:

When a patient completes a form with connected questions, their profile will update straight away with the information they’ve provided.

If you ever need to confirm what’s been updated in a patient’s record as well as how it was updated, you can use the patient change log. To access this, open the patient's page, scroll to the bottom, and click on patient change log:

This log shows:

When updates come directly from forms, the log will show that the change was made by the patient via the form submission. This makes it easy to see whether details were updated by a staff member, or by the patient themselves.

Form templates that were created prior to the release of the connected questions feature won't have questions linked to the patient record. You can manually edit the templates to add the connected questions.

Alternatively for longer forms, you can export the existing template you have as a PDF or image file and reimport them into Cliniko to take advantage of this feature.

To export your existing template, head to Settings, and then Patient form templates:

Select the template you'd like to export. On the next page, hit command/ctrl + P save it as a PDF:

Then to import this, head back into Settings, and then Patient form templates:

Select Import on the top right:

Enter a template name and select the PDF file you saved previously:

Once you select import template, Cliniko will use image analysis to detect the questions on the form and automatically match them to patient details you have as connected questions. This includes standard patient fields (e.g. name, phone, email) as well as custom patient fields you’ve set up.

Even if the text isn’t a perfect match (for example, if there are typos or slightly different wording), Cliniko will still try to connect it to the correct field. Because of this, we recommend reviewing the imported template after it’s created. Double-check that each form field is connected to the right patient detail especially for custom fields or anything that was matched on a “close enough” basis.

Questions that are connected to your patient's existing questions will have Connected question appear under the question title:

Remember to update your appointment reminders, confirmations etc. to use the new template and archive the older one. If you have more questions about connecting your forms to your patient records, please get in touch! 💬