Encounter completion — forms & letters

Letters and filled forms, without leaving the visit

A work excuse, a school note, an FMLA certification, a disability form — paperwork that used to mean opening a word processor, hunting for the right PDF, and retyping the chart now lives inside the encounter itself. The Forms & Letters section sits at the bottom of the completion checklist, directly under Medications, and gives you two ways to produce a patient document:

Both paths end the same way: you sign, and the finished PDF goes to the patient portal, where the patient finds it under Letters & Forms. A printer icon on every sent document prints the exact same filed copy for the patient who wants paper — what prints is always what the portal shows.

Nothing here is visible to the patient until you sign it. Drafts, generating forms, and documents waiting for your review exist only on your side; the moment one is signed or approved it appears in the portal and the patient is notified.

The note editor, repurposed for letters

Write letter opens the composer with a choice of starters: Blank letter plus every letter template your practice has — Hero ships Work Excuse and School Excuse to begin with, and you can add your own under Settings → AI Customization → Forms (see below).

Starters are not empty pages. The letter opens with the facts the chart already knows — the patient’s name, date of birth, and the visit date — substituted into the template’s bracketed placeholders; what remains are the case-specific blanks, as *** fill fields or bracketed hints:

The editor is the same one you write notes in, so everything you already know applies:

• Dot phrases expand here exactly as they do in the note — type . and the shortcut. A letter you write weekly is one dot phrase away (see Dot phrases).
• Formatting — bold, italics, underline, lists — from the toolbar or the usual Ctrl+B family.
• Fill fields — + *** inserts a blank, F2 and Shift+F2 walk through them.

Save draft stores the letter on the encounter and closes the composer — the section lists it with a Draft chip, and the pencil icon reopens it any time. Drafts are private to the practice; the patient never sees them.

One click: rendered, signed, in the portal

Sign & send to portal turns the draft into a finished document: Hero lays the letter onto your practice letterhead — practice name, phone, the patient block, today’s date in your practice’s time zone — embeds your saved signature image above your typed name, and files the PDF. The patient sees it in the portal immediately and is notified.

• If the letter still contains unfilled *** blanks, Hero warns you first — you can sign anyway, but the blanks will print as asterisks.
• Signing requires a saved signature. If you have never drawn one, the composer says so and points you to Settings → Signature; the letter stays a draft until then.
• A signed letter is final — it can be viewed and printed but not edited or deleted. Need a different version? Write a new letter.

The form catalog, filled from the chart

Fill form (AI) opens the picker. At the top sit your letter templates — the AI writes the whole letter following your template, from the visit’s chart, and opens it in the composer for your review. Below them, the PDF catalog: the federal FMLA medical certification, state paid-leave and serious-health-condition certifications, and general forms for disability, travel clearance, and accommodations. Search matches by any words in the name — and Upload a PDF takes an employer’s or school’s own form when they insist on theirs.

Add any specifics in the instructions box — “absence August 20–24, no restrictions on return” — and press Generate. A letter template comes back in seconds and opens straight into the composer as an editable draft; a PDF form shows a Generating… chip in the section and parks at Ready for review when done. Either way Hero reads the visit’s chart — the note, the diagnoses, your details — and writes onto your format.

Your letter templates

Letter formats live under Settings → AI Customization → Forms (the menu previously called Prompts). A template is ordinary rich text — the same editor as the note, dot phrases included — where [square brackets] mark facts the AI fills from the visit and *** marks blanks left for you. Each template can carry its own AI guidance (tone, rules, emphasis). System templates are read-only; duplicate one to make it yours. The practice logo, letterhead, and your signature are never part of the template — they are applied automatically when the letter is signed.

Check every field, fix with plain English, then sign off

The eye icon on a Ready for review row opens the filled form:

• Approve & send to portal embeds your signature into the form’s signature fields, files it, sends it to the portal, and notifies the patient — the row flips to Sent to portal and gains the printer icon.
• Quick edit takes a plain-English correction — “return date is 9/2, limit lifting to 10 lbs” — and regenerates the form with your instruction folded in. The row shows Generating… again, then returns for another review.
• The trash icon discards an unapproved form entirely.

Patient-initiated requests land here too: when a patient asks for a form from their portal and it touches this visit, it appears in the list with a patient-requested badge and goes through the same review-and-approve gate.

Portal delivery, notifications, and the section at a glance

A signed letter or approved form appears in the patient portal under Letters & Forms, titled the way you titled it — a letter named “Work Excuse Letter” shows exactly that, and an untitled one shows as Letter from your care team. The patient can view and download the PDF; what they download is byte-for-byte the document you signed.

The patient is also notified that a new document is waiting, through their preferred channels (portal push, text, or email), with a link to the portal — never the document’s contents. Notifications respect the patient’s communication preferences and quiet hours: a form approved at 7 AM waits politely for the morning send window.

Back on your side, the collapsed section header keeps score for the whole visit: