Reviewing and signing an AI-drafted note

Ona drafts your clinical notes so you review and sign rather than write from scratch. The draft is built from a template you choose, with placeholders filled from the visit and patient record. You stay in control — nothing is signed until you sign it.

Generate a note

Open the visit and go to its Notes section. When there are none, it reads "No notes yet."

Click Generate one (or Generate note once notes exist). The dialog asks which template to use.

It states plainly what happens: "Choose a template to generate a note for this patient. Placeholders will be filled with visit and patient data." Pick a template — your imported ones appear here, e.g. SOAP Note, Mental Status Exam — and click Generate note.

A note that comes back full of "N/A" isn't broken. Placeholders fill from what's recorded, so a visit with no recording and no charted findings has little to draw on. The richer the visit — a recording, charted vitals, a diagnosis — the more the draft writes itself.

Review and edit

The generated note opens in an editor.

The editor is full rich text — bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, code, headings, lists, and links. The note carries a Draft note label in the bottom-left until it's signed, and undo/redo sit at the top.

Three actions in the footer:

• Close — leave without saving changes.
• Save as draft — keep your edits, stay unsigned.
• Sign and close — finalize the note.

Read every draft before signing. The AI assembles a note; it doesn't practice medicine. You are attesting that what it wrote is accurate — an "N/A" where there should be a finding, or a templated phrase that doesn't fit this patient, is yours to fix before you sign.

Sign

Sign and close finalizes the note. The badge changes from Draft to Signed, and the note appears in the visit and on the patient record with that status.

Signing is an attestation — the clinical equivalent of putting your name to the record. Treat it with the weight it carries: once signed, a note is part of the legal chart. Changing a signed note is a formal amendment, not a casual edit (see Amending a signed note).

Export

Export PDF in the note's top-right produces a PDF of the note, for sharing outside Ona or attaching to a referral.

Why signing matters downstream

A signed note isn't just documentation — it gates billing. Your organization's billing rules can require a note before a visit can be billed (the Note required per visit rule, on by default; see Billing rules and claim scrubbing). So signing the note is often the step that unblocks the invoice and the claim. The next article, From signed note to superbill and claim, picks up there.