It knows what the note has to say, and what it must not.
A clinician describes the session; Alinea writes the intake, the progress note or the treatment plan from that description and nothing else — the risk assessment stated, the diagnosis the clinician made, the goals scored — and marks what to check, so the clinician reviews and signs instead of writing. Insurance-billed or private-pay, the note carries what that practice needs and nothing it does not.
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N. F.
Generalized anxiety · Progress note · Session 9
Progress toward goals
Goal 1 (GAD-7 below 10 within 12 weeks): GAD-7 9 today, from 16 at the 4 Aug intake — met. Goal 2 (attend two social events a month without leaving early): one event this month, stayed to the end — progressing.
Risk assessment
Denies suicidal and homicidal ideation, plan or intent; protective factors: partner, work, planned trip. Risk assessed as low, unchanged from 2 Sep.
Alinea asked
“You mentioned the panic in the car — was that this week, or the episode from the intake?”
Nobody became a therapist to write notes at ten at night. But the note still has to state risk, score the goals, and — when a payer reads it — say why treatment is still necessary, in a way that survives an audit and says no more about the client than it must.
Three steps, and you own the last one.
Step 1
Get it down however you work
Type a line between clients, dictate on the way out, or talk the session through with the assistant afterwards. It all lands in one place, tied to the client, the episode and the date.
Step 2
Get asked for what this note is missing
Alinea knows an intake needs the history and the diagnosis you made, and a progress note needs the risk assessment and the minutes. It asks about those — spoken or typed — instead of handing you a form.
Step 3
Review a note written against the episode
The result is a structured DAP note built from the treatment plan on record and every prior session. You edit it, you sign it. Your process notes stay yours, in a place the note never reads.
Not a transcriber. It knows what belongs in the note.
Anything can turn speech into text. The hard part is knowing that risk is stated on every note, that a diagnosis is yours alone, that a timed code needs its minutes, and that the record should carry the minimum necessary — and refusing to paper over any of it. That is what Alinea is.
Every note type has its own requirements
An intake carries the presenting problem, the history, the mental status, the risk assessment, the diagnosis you made and the goals. A progress note carries the risk assessment, the interventions, the response and progress against each goal. A treatment plan puts each goal beside its last statement. A discharge summary closes the episode against the intake.
Risk is stated, never assumed
If you recorded that risk was assessed and denied, the note says so in your words. If you did not mention it, the field stays empty and Alinea asks — it never writes "denies SI/HI" for you.
It never proposes a diagnosis
The diagnosis in the note is the one you stated, with the code you gave. Alinea does not suggest, upgrade or add one, and it asks rather than guessing when the notes state none.
It knows which requirements apply to your practice
A practice that bills insurance gets the service code and the medical-necessity statement, and a treatment-plan review every ninety days. A private-pay practice never sees those fields and is never scored on them.
The draft is checked against your words
Before you draft, your notes are read for real problems only: a denial of ideation beside a report of passive thoughts, two scores that conflict, a session length with no unit. After the draft, a separate check compares every claim to what you said.
Your process notes stay private
Psychotherapy notes live in a place only you can open: never part of the record, never exported, never read by Alinea when it writes. The note carries the minimum the record needs, and the rest stays with you.
Same session. Same five minutes. Different note.
A note written quickly at the end of a long day tends to say the client is doing better. A note that survives review says what the client reported, what you did, how they responded, where the goals stand with the earlier value beside them, and what the risk was — without saying more about the client than it must. The second one does not have to take longer than the first.
Written from memory
Data
Client doing better this week. Discussed work stress. Continue CBT.
Risk assessment
No concerns.
Nothing here is false. It just cannot be reviewed — no measure, no intervention named, no risk actually assessed.
Built with Alinea from the same session
Data
Reports two panic-free weeks; one episode of anticipatory anxiety before a client presentation, managed with paced breathing. GAD-7 9 today, from 14 on 2 Sep. Worked on the belief "if I stumble they will think I am incompetent" with cognitive restructuring; client generated two alternative predictions.
Risk assessment
Denies suicidal and homicidal ideation, plan or intent; protective factors named. Risk low, unchanged from 2 Sep.
Every value came from the clinician — they answered one question and edited. Alinea assembled the rest from the episode.
Four note types, each held to its own standard.
Re-reading the chart before a treatment-plan review or a discharge summary is work you should not have to do twice. Alinea writes each note with the goals, the diagnosis and every prior session already in hand.
Intake assessment
Establishes the presenting problem, history, mental status, risk, the diagnosis you made, and the goals and approach the episode is measured against.
Progress note
One session in DAP: the mental status and risk, what you did, how the client responded, progress against each goal, the between-session work — and the service code where a payer reads it.
Treatment plan
Written or reviewed: each goal beside its last statement with what changed and why; under insurance, reviewed at least every ninety days and carrying the medical-necessity statement.
Discharge summary
Why treatment ended, status at discharge beside status at intake, each goal's final verdict, risk as last assessed, and the recommendations.
Better for the clinician writing it. Better for the practice relying on it.
For clinicians
Get the evening 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 — the risk assessment, the minutes — instead of a form that asks for everything.
- Keep your process notes yours: private, never part of the record, never read by the assistant.
For practices
The note that survives review, from every clinician, whoever you bill.
- Every session leaves with the record a review rests on: risk stated, interventions named, goals scored, and — under insurance — the code with its minutes and the necessity statement, or a named gap, never a blank a reviewer finds first.
- One standard on every note, whoever wrote it and however late it was.
- Nothing invented, so a note never says more than the clinician did — and never more about the client than the record needs.
- No EHR 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 practice with a client already mid-episode — enough to see, in about fifteen minutes, whether a note built this way is one you would sign.