Forms or questionnaires — which to use

Ona has two separate features for collecting patient input, and they are not variations of the same thing. Questionnaires are a conversation: Ona asks about the subjects you defined, follows up based on what the patient says, and hands you back a structured result. Forms are a document: the same questions in the same order for every patient, read and signed.

Picking the wrong one is the most common source of frustration with intake, so it's worth two minutes to get this right.

The quick rule

Ask yourself one question: does the wording have to be identical for every patient?

• Yes — it's a Form. Policies, agreements, anything with a signature, anything you might have to produce later exactly as the patient saw it.
• No — it's a Questionnaire. History, symptoms, lifestyle, goals: anything where the useful follow-up depends on the previous answer.

A second check, if the first one didn't settle it: do you want the answers as structured clinical data? Only questionnaires extract diagnoses, medications, allergies and observations onto the chart. A form's answers stay a document.

Questionnaires — a conversation

The patient opens a link and has a chat. Ona asks in plain language, follows up when an answer is vague or opens something worth pursuing, and only moves to the next step once the current one is genuinely covered.

You don't write the questions. You define steps (topics) and subjects within them, plus optional guidance on how to handle each subject. The wording is Ona's, and it varies with the patient.

Afterwards the clinician gets three things on the patient record:

• Results — a structured summary: Working Well, Areas of Attention, Insights & Focus Areas, Next Steps, Daily Checklist, Timeline & Follow-up.
• Conversation — the full transcript, if you want to see how an answer was reached.
• Clinical Records — diagnoses, observations, allergies and medications extracted from the conversation, editable and linked back to it.

Good fits: new-patient history, follow-up reviews, mental-health check-ins, functional-medicine intake, anything where you'd otherwise write "tell me about…" on a paper form and hope for a useful paragraph.

Not a fit: anything requiring a signature, fixed legal wording, or a scored instrument. Questionnaires don't produce scores or totals.

Forms — a document

The patient opens a link and sees exactly what you built: text blocks, choice questions and free-text answers, in the order you set them. Nothing adapts.

Submitting a form is a deliberate three-step ceremony — Review → Agree → Sign. The patient has to scroll to the end of the document and answer every required question before they can continue, then accept the electronic-signature agreement, then draw a signature. There is no lightweight unsigned path: every form submission is signed.

What's stored with it is the point. Alongside the answers, Ona keeps the signature, a hash of the exact document that was on screen at signing, the timestamp, and the request details. If you edit the template later, the signed copy is untouched.

Good fits: clinic policies, financial and cancellation agreements, procedure-specific paperwork, post-visit feedback, screening checklists where consistency matters more than nuance.

Not a fit: open-ended history. Five block types (text, single choice, multiple choice, short answer, long answer) is deliberately a small toolkit, and there's no branching — every patient sees every question.

Side by side

How the questions are decided

A questionnaire is built from steps and subjects; Ona phrases the actual questions and adapts them. A form is built from blocks; you write every word and every patient sees the same ones.

What the patient does

A questionnaire is a chat — they type answers at their own pace and Ona decides when a step is done. A form is a document — they read it, answer, and sign.

What you get back

A questionnaire returns a structured summary, a transcript, and clinical records on the chart. A form returns a signed document with an audit trail.

What they share

Both are sent as a secure one-time link that needs no sign-in and expires. Both can be attached to a service, so booking that service sends them automatically in a single email. Both appear on the patient and consultation record under Inputs, and both can be completed in the patient portal.

Where consents fit

Consents are a third, separate feature — not a kind of form. They live under Library → Consents, have their own template library, and support rich text with discrete checkboxes for individually affirming specific points.

The practical division: use a Consent when the patient is agreeing to something and the record needs to show they agreed to each part; use a Form when you're also collecting answers. See Building consents.

A worked example

A new-patient intake pack on paper usually contains three different things stapled together. In Ona it splits cleanly:

1. The history section — symptoms, medications, lifestyle, goals — becomes a Questionnaire.
2. The clinic policy and financial agreement becomes a Consent.
3. Anything else that must be asked identically of everyone — a screening checklist, an insurance detail block — becomes a Form.

Attach all three to the service. Booking it sends one email with all three tasks, and everything is on the chart before the patient arrives.