Goal: Walk into the room knowing this patient's story and where anything worth a second look is waiting, before the client says a word.
Why this matters
The chart already holds the picture: why they keep coming back, what's changed, what looked off last time. Two minutes here means you're not reading the history out loud in front of the client. It also means you catch the easy-to-miss thing such as the overdue recheck, the weight that's been creeping down, the alert someone left for a reason.
Not sure how to open a chart yet? Start with Find and Review Your Patient.
Prefer to click through it first? Take the tour, then come back for the steps.
Step 1: Start with why they're here today
The current visit frames everything else you read. Open the Chart tab and find the current visit card, outlined in orange. Read the reason for visit, the visit problems, and the check-in time. This frames everything after it.
Heads up: The orange card only appears once the patient is checked in. Prepping ahead of the appointment? The reason for visit is on the appointment itself.
Step 2: Read the history
Still in the Chart tab, work back through the prior visit cards.
Visits from the past year open by default. Click the expand icon to open older ones.
Open the charting documents from a visit card, SOAP notes and exam forms, to see past findings and clinical notes. This is where the presenting history lives.
Check Non-Visit Documents above the visit cards for records from another practice, referral letters, or history uploaded at onboarding.
For the running problem list at a glance, the Snapshot tab's Main Problem/Dx keeps active problems up top and drops resolved ones to the bottom.
Heads up: Can't find last year's workup? It's probably collapsed. Anything older than a year hides until you expand it.
✂️ Shortcut: let Instinct Intelligence Summarize it
Reading every prior visit takes time. Instinct's AI can do the first pass for you and hand back a summary in seconds. Two kinds are worth knowing:
Patient Summary: a quick rundown of the whole chart, conditions, visits, medications, and reminders. Use this to get the story fast instead of clicking through every visit.
Visit Summary: a rundown of a single visit, the reason for it, treatments, medications given, and discharge status. To summarize a specific visit, pick it from the Visit drop-down at the bottom of the chat window.
Use the summary to get oriented faster; the AI surfaces the key information so it's easier to sort through.
Tip: The summary gets you oriented. It doesn't replace the chart. The AI tells you what happened. Deciding what's worth watching in the room is your call, so run Steps 3 and 4 either way.
Step 3: Check the vitals
Open the Vitals tab. Today's intake vitals, weight, temp, pulse, respiration, are recorded here. Two things worth doing:
Trend within the visit: hover over the orange space on the Vitals Board and drag to move the trend line.
Compare across visits: click Vitals History at the top of the board. This is how you catch the slow change, the weight that's been dropping for three visits straight
Step 4: Know where the flags live
Instinct EMR surfaces warnings in three places. Worth knowing before you walk in, so nothing hides on you.
Alerts. In the patient info bar down the side of the chart. Patient alerts follow the patient across every visit. Visit alerts apply to today only.
Reminders. In the info bar and on the Snapshot tab. Red means overdue. Yellow means due within 60 days.
Vitals History. In the Vitals tab (Step 3). This is where a trend across visits shows up.
Tip: Alerts = what to know now. Reminders = what's due. Vitals History = what's trending.
👉 Now you try
Setup: Check your patient in.
Do: (Optional) Generate a Patient Summary, then work through Steps 1–4 yourself.
Check: Can you identify why they’re here today, summarize their history in one line, and name one thing you’d flag before walking in that the summary didn’t tell you?
Done right: You can quickly explain why the patient is here, what matters from their history, and what needs your attention before the visit begins.