It knows what the note has to prove.
A PT describes the visit; Alinea writes a billing-grade note from that description and nothing else, and marks what to check, so the therapist reviews and signs instead of writing. Every therapist in the clinic produces the same standard of note, whatever their charting skill, without changing the EMR.
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Jane Doe
R shoulder impingement · Progress note · Visit 8
Progress toward goals
Short-term goal 1 (flexion 140°, ER 55° within 5 weeks): flexion at 135° and ER at 50° — on track with one week remaining. Short-term goal 2 (pain ≤ 3/10 overhead): 5/10 overhead — partially met.
Skilled need
Skilled PT remains medically necessary to progress glenohumeral mobilization to higher grades and to advance rotator cuff loading parameters the patient cannot safely determine independently.
Alinea asked
“You didn't say why skilled therapy is still necessary. What are you doing that she couldn't progress on her own?”
Nobody went into physical therapy to write notes. But the note still has to prove skilled need, show progress against the goals you set, and hold up when a payer asks what changed since the evaluation.
Three steps, and you own the last one.
Step 1
Get it down however you work
Type a line between patients, dictate on the way to the next room, or sit down later and talk the visit through with the assistant. It all lands in one place, tied to the patient, episode, and service date.
Step 2
Get asked for what this note is missing
Alinea knows which fields this note type requires and which ones you have not covered. It asks about those — spoken or typed — instead of handing you a template that asks for everything at once.
Step 3
Review a draft written against the chart
The result is a structured note built from the goals in the initial evaluation and every prior visit in the episode. A verify pass checks the draft back against what you actually said. You edit it, you sign it.
Not a transcriber. It knows what belongs in the note.
Anything can turn speech into text. The hard part of PT documentation is knowing what a given note is required to establish, noticing when it isn't established yet, and refusing to paper over the gap. That is what Alinea is.
Every note type has its own requirements
An initial evaluation has to carry prior level of function, rehabilitation potential, short- and long-term goals, and a plan of care. A progress note has to carry a per-goal comparison and a skilled-need justification. A discharge has to carry goal achievement, residual deficits, and disposition. Alinea holds each draft to its own standard.
It asks instead of inventing
If you did not say it, Alinea will not write it. A number you did not give stays out; a measurement you did not take is stated as not documented; a detail that needs one more fact — which side, which joint, how many minutes — comes back as a question. Never as plausible-sounding text in the chart.
Generic language does not pass
Skilled need has to be reasoned from this patient’s current presentation, not boilerplate. Progress has to be stated goal by goal against objective data, not summarized as "patient is improving."
It knows which requirements apply today
A progress note is expected to reference a standardized outcome measure. A routine daily note is not. Alinea asks for what this visit actually needs rather than flagging every note as incomplete.
The draft is checked against your words
Before you draft, your notes are read for real problems only: a measurement missing its joint or side, two pain ratings that conflict, an independence claim that contradicts an assistive-device note. A value stated two ways is left out of the note and asked. After the draft, a separate check compares every claim to what you said and points at the sentence — you keep it or remove it. Style and phrasing are left alone.
Every note is written to the billing standard
A procedure and time chart with the minutes you said — even in passing — and the visit total, ranked ICD-10 candidates with the evidence behind each, standardized outcome measures when one was administered, CPT support where your codes or an approved source supply it, and a skilled-need statement specific to this patient. What is missing is named, not hidden.
Same visit. Same five minutes. Different note.
A note written quickly at the end of a long day tends to say that the patient is improving. A note that answers a payer has to say by how much, against which goal, and why a licensed therapist was required. The point is that the second one does not have to take longer than the first.
Written from memory
Assessment
Patient is progressing well with therapy. Tolerating exercises without difficulty. Continue current plan of care.
Skilled need
Continued skilled therapy indicated.
Nothing here is false. It just doesn't establish anything — no measure, no goal, no reason a therapist was needed.
Built with Alinea from the same visit
Assessment
Shoulder flexion 135° (from 95° at evaluation) and external rotation 50° (from 30°). Abductor MMT 4−/5, up from 3+/5. Gains remain on trajectory toward short-term goals with no adverse response to progressive loading.
Skilled need
Skilled PT is required to progress glenohumeral mobilization to grades III–IV and to adjust rotator cuff loading parameters based on tissue response — judgments the patient cannot make independently without risk of re-exacerbation.
Every number came from the therapist — they answered two questions and edited. Alinea assembled the rest from the chart.
Five note types, each held to its own standard.
Re-reading the chart before a progress note or a discharge summary is work you should not have to do twice. Alinea writes each one with the patient's active goals and every prior visit already in hand.
Initial evaluation
Requires prior level of function, rehabilitation potential, short- and long-term goals, and a plan of care — so the goals every later note is measured against actually exist.
Daily note
Turn quick after-session recall into a cohesive visit note, without demanding the outcome measures a routine visit does not need.
Progress note
Requires a goal-by-goal comparison against objective data and a skilled-need justification specific to this patient — the two things payers look for.
Reevaluation
Revisits goals and progress mid-episode with prior notes in context, and asks what has changed enough to justify a revised plan.
Discharge
Requires goal achievement, residual deficits, and disposition, summarized from the whole episode rather than the last visit.
Better for the therapist writing it. Better for the clinic relying on it.
For therapists
Get the day back, and the detail with it.
- Work the way you already do — typed, dictated, or talked through. None of it is a separate step.
- Spend the time editing rather than writing. The draft arrives structured, so what is left is judgment, not typing.
- Stop rebuilding the session from memory. The draft starts from what you actually said.
- Get asked about what this note is missing, instead of staring at a template that asks for everything at once.
- Keep control of the chart: every draft is yours to edit, verify, and sign.
For clinics
The note that gets paid, from every therapist, without changing your EMR.
- Every visit leaves with the chart a claim rests on: procedure minutes and the visit total, codes with their evidence, and a skilled-need statement specific to that patient — or a named gap, never a blank the payer finds first.
- One standard on every note, whoever wrote it and however tired they were. A new graduate writes to the same bar on day one.
- Nothing invented, so a note never says more than the therapist did. That is the audit exposure that matters, and it is designed out rather than caught later.
- No EMR migration. Alinea sits beside the system you already run and hands back a finished, signed note; every export is logged, access is audit-logged, retention and purge are scheduled, and dictation audio is deleted after transcription.
Quicker to write. Harder to argue with.
Evaluators get a private clinic with a patient already mid-episode — enough to see, in about fifteen minutes, whether a note built this way is one you would sign.