Correcting a signed note
Signed notes lock by design. What the lock covers, why there is no edit button, and the right ways to correct the record.
Once you sign a clinical note, it locks. This is deliberate — a signed note is part of the legal medical record, and an editable legal record isn't a legal record. This article explains what "locked" means in Ona and what to do when a signed note needs correcting.
A signed note is read-only
Open a signed note from its visit or the patient record. It looks like the draft editor, but it behaves differently.
The differences from a draft:
- The badge reads Signed, not Draft.
- The formatting toolbar is greyed out — you can't type into the body.
- There are no Save or Sign buttons in the footer. A draft has them; a signed note doesn't.
- The bottom carries an audit line: Signed · [date, time] · IP: [address] · UA: [browser]. This records who attested the note, when, and from where.
The only action is Export
Open the note card's ⋮ menu.
The menu offers Export PDF and nothing else. There is no Edit, no Delete, no Amend. The note is fixed.
This is the point of signing. If a signed note could be quietly changed, its signature would mean nothing. The lock is what makes the attestation trustworthy — and what an auditor or another clinician relies on when they read it later.
When a note needs to change
Because there's no in-place edit, a correction takes one of these forms:
- A new note. Generate or write a fresh note on the same visit for the additional or corrected information, and sign it. Both notes then exist, and the record shows the sequence — which is exactly how a paper chart handles a correction: you add to it, you don't erase.
- An administrative fix. If a note was signed in genuine error — wrong patient, wrong visit — that's not a clinical correction but a records issue. Contact your Ona administrator rather than trying to work around the lock.
A note on this feature
The current build does not have a dedicated addendum or amendment tool that attaches a formal correction to an existing signed note while keeping both visible as one linked record. If your practice needs formal amendments for compliance, the practical approach today is the additional-note method above. This is worth raising with Ona if a linked-amendment workflow matters to your compliance process.
Why this matters before you sign
Everything here is a reason to review a note carefully before signing rather than after. The draft stage is where editing is free and easy (see Reviewing and signing an AI-drafted note). Once you click Sign and close, the note is committed — so read it, fix the "N/A"s and the templated phrases that don't fit, and only then sign.
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