How LocalScribe Works with ICANotes

If you use ICANotes, LocalScribe is most useful when it is set up to match the structure ICANotes already expects. ICANotes is built around behavioral-health-specific templates rather than a mostly blank-document workflow. Its charting system includes menu-driven templates for progress notes, treatment plans, assessments, discharge summaries, group therapy notes, case management notes, and more, and those templates are customizable to fit specialty and documentation needs.

The main setup choice

If your workflow is fairly standard and you are documenting in a familiar format like SOAP, DAP, or BIRP, a built-in LocalScribe template may be enough to get started. ICANotes explicitly centers those note formats and provides progress-note guidance around them. But many ICANotes users work inside a more structured, menu-driven documentation flow, so a LocalScribe custom template will often be the better fit when you want the draft to line up more closely with the note structure you actually use.

Progress notes

This is the place where built-in LocalScribe templates are most likely to work. ICANotes highlights SOAP, DAP, and BIRP as common progress-note formats and positions them as standard ways to organize clinical documentation. If that is how you already work, starting with the matching LocalScribe template makes sense. If your ICANotes workflow is more structured or more customized, build a LocalScribe custom progress-note template that mirrors that structure instead.

These custom-template examples show the section headers and the instructions you would give the model for each section.

A practical custom progress-note template in LocalScribe might use:

Subjective: Include the client’s reported symptoms, concerns, updates, and relevant self-report since the last session.

Objective: Include observable behavior, mental status findings, participation, affect, speech, and other session-based observations.

Assessment: Summarize the clinical meaning of the session, response to interventions, current functioning, and barriers to progress.

Interventions and response: Document key interventions used and how the client responded to them.

Risk or safety updates: Include any relevant risk findings, protective factors, and meaningful changes in safety status.

Plan: Include homework, follow-up steps, referrals, frequency, and the next clinical focus.

Intake and assessment

This is a stronger custom-template category. ICANotes emphasizes structured intake documentation and distinguishes among different intake-related workflows such as counseling intake, psychiatric intake, and biopsychosocial assessment. It also describes the biopsychosocial assessment as a standard framework used during intake to support diagnosis, treatment planning, and documentation of medical necessity. That makes intake a good place to build a LocalScribe custom template that matches the kind of assessment you actually do.

A practical intake or assessment template in LocalScribe might use:

Presenting concern: Summarize why the client is seeking treatment now, including major symptoms, concerns, and relevant context.

Symptom picture and current concerns: Describe the current symptom pattern, severity, and major clinical concerns.

Relevant history: Include psychiatric, medical, family, social, trauma, substance, and prior treatment history relevant to care.

Current functioning: Describe functioning across work, school, relationships, and daily life.

Risk and safety: Document current and relevant historical risk factors, protective factors, and safety-related findings.

Initial formulation and recommendations: Summarize the initial clinical picture and recommended next steps.

Treatment plans

Treatment planning in ICANotes is structured enough that a LocalScribe custom template usually makes more sense than a broad generic plan format. ICANotes describes treatment plans in terms of problems, goals, objectives, and interventions, and its treatment-plan module uses editable, diagnosis-based templates for those components. The company also highlights linking treatment-plan progress to notes and tying progress notes back to goals and client outcomes.

A practical treatment-plan template in LocalScribe might use:

Problem area: State the diagnosis, presenting problem, or treatment target being addressed.

Goals: Write broad treatment goals in clear clinical language.

Objectives: List measurable or observable objectives that show progress toward the goal.

Interventions: Describe the clinician interventions, treatment approach, or services planned.

Progress measures and review: Document how progress will be tracked and when the plan will be reviewed.

Discharge summaries

ICANotes also has a defined discharge-summary workflow and sample-note library, which makes discharge another clear template category rather than an afterthought. Its sample library describes discharge summaries that can include a cover page with the initial psychiatric assessment, compressed progress notes, and a final page with risk factors, final diagnosis, condition at discharge, and discharge instructions. That means you can either use a simple built-in LocalScribe discharge template or create a custom one if you want a closer match to your ICANotes discharge workflow.

A practical discharge-summary template in LocalScribe might use:

Course of treatment: Summarize the treatment provided, major themes, and overall course of care.

Progress and response: Describe gains, ongoing concerns, and how the client responded to treatment.

Final diagnosis and condition at discharge: Document the final diagnosis and the client’s status at discharge.

Risk and safety status: Summarize any relevant risk findings, protective factors, and safety considerations at discharge.

Discharge plan and recommendations: Include referrals, follow-up recommendations, instructions, and next steps.

What to put into LocalScribe

Use the same source material you would normally rely on while writing manually. That can include typed shorthand, pasted text, dictation, ambient or session recording, and attachments such as intake paperwork, prior documents, rating scales, screeners, and other clinically relevant materials. LocalScribe is built to turn that source material into a structured draft, and its custom-template and test-reference tools become more useful as documentation gets more specialized.

Bottom line

For ICANotes, built-in LocalScribe templates may work well for standard SOAP, DAP, or BIRP-style progress notes. Intake assessments, treatment plans, discharge summaries, and any workflow that depends on ICANotes’ more structured template logic are often better handled with a LocalScribe custom template that mirrors the structure you actually use there.