Screening forms that score themselves

Screening turns a form into an instrument. Each answer carries a point value, and when the patient submits, Ona totals the points, matches the total against severity bands you define, and raises any flags you've configured — all automatically, at the moment of submission. Scores are visible to clinicians only. The patient fills in an ordinary form and never sees a number.

It's built for standardized mental-health instruments — PHQ-9, GAD-7 and anything with the same shape — but works for any form where fixed answers map to points.

Import a ready-made screener

The fastest start is not to build anything. Two screeners ship in the form library under Library → Forms:

PHQ-9 Depression Screening — the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire, with the canonical 0–27 scoring, all five severity bands, and a preconfigured suicidality flag on item 9.
GAD-7 Anxiety Screening — the seven-item anxiety scale, scored 0–21 with its standard bands.

Import copies one into your own forms with the full scoring setup attached — values, bands and flags included. Unless you're building a custom instrument, start here rather than from scratch.

Turn on screening

In the form builder, flip the Screening toggle near the top of the editor. Every single-choice question becomes scoreable, and each of its options gets a point value in the small box beside the label — seeded 0, 1, 2… in option order, editable to anything.

A scored single-choice question in the builder — point values beside each option, with Required, Scored and Reverse scored toggles below

Per question you get two extra toggles next to Required to submit:

Scored — whether this question counts. Turn it off for questions that belong in the form but not in the score.
Reverse scored — flips the value within the question's own range, for instruments that mix positively and negatively worded items.

Only single-choice questions can be scored — text, free-text and multiple-choice blocks never carry points. And note the preview pane: it shows the form exactly as the patient will see it, which means no point values anywhere.

Toggling Screening off keeps your configuration, so you can switch it back on later without rebuilding.

Scores, bands and flags

With screening on, a Screening panel appears below the blocks. This is where points become a result.

The Screening panel — the total scale with its severity bands, and a flag rule on the suicidality question

The total scale sums every scored question; the live max beside its name updates as you edit values. Give it the instrument's name — "PHQ-9 Total" — because that label is what clinicians see on the result.
Unanswered questions — choose what happens when a scored question has no answer. Require all answers refuses to produce a score if anything is missing (the right choice for most instruments); Prorate the score scales up from the answered questions, up to a number of missing answers you allow, and marks the result as prorated.
Severity bands map score ranges to labels. Each band is an inclusive range with a label and a severity level — the severity drives the color of the result badge, from calm green through amber and orange to red. The builder warns about overlapping or gapped ranges as you type.
Flags fire when a question's value or a scale's score crosses a threshold. The PHQ-9 template ships the canonical example: item 9 answered above "Not at all" raises a critical Suicidality risk flag. Flags are shown prominently on the result and carried into notifications.

For unusual instruments there's an Advanced section per scale — transform the raw score through a formula or a lookup table — and an Add subscale button for instruments that report more than one number. Most practices will never need either.

What the patient sees

An ordinary form. The same Review–Agree–Sign flow as any other form, the same signature and audit trail — and no scores, no point values, and no clinical labels anywhere in the patient's view.

The patient's view of a screening form — plain questions, no scores or clinical labels anywhere

This is deliberate, and it follows how these instruments are administered on paper: the official PHQ-9 form says "Patient Health Questionnaire", not "depression test". Telling a patient what a form measures changes how they answer it, which undermines the validated cutoffs — so the patient-facing view carries only the questions.

Reading the result

The moment a screening form is submitted, the score is everywhere the form is:

A submitted PHQ-9 on the patient record — the score badge on the list row, and the flag callout and score card in the form view

On the patient's Forms list, the submitted row carries a colored badge — "27/27 · Severe depression" — and a red warning icon if any flags fired.
Opening the form shows flags first, in a red callout with the guidance you wrote into the rule, then the score card: each scale's total, its maximum, and its severity band. The patient's individual answers follow below, with the signature record at the foot.
The form submitted notification — in-app always, email if enabled — includes the score and any flags, so whoever sent the form knows the result without opening it. See Notification settings.

A flag is information, not a diagnosis. It tells you a threshold was crossed so you can follow your clinical protocol — it doesn't interpret the answer for you.

Details that matter

Scoring is fixed at send time. Each sent form snapshots the scoring configuration along with the questions, so editing the template later — changing values, bands, flags — never changes a form that's already out or already submitted.
A result can be "Not scored." Under Require all answers, a form submitted with a scored question skipped shows why instead of a misleading number. Prorated results say so.
Scores are computed once, by the server, at submission. There's no way to hand-edit a score or recompute it afterwards — the score card always reflects exactly what the patient answered.
There's no cross-patient reporting or score trending yet — each result lives on its form.