How LocalScribe Works with Sessions Health

If you use Sessions Health in private practice, LocalScribe can fit your workflow in two different ways. Sessions includes a real library of built-in note templates, so many clinicians can start with a standard LocalScribe template and be close right away. At the same time, Sessions also supports fully custom notes, intake forms, assessments, and treatment plans, which means some clinicians will get a better fit by building a LocalScribe custom template that mirrors their Sessions setup.

The main setup choice

Sessions offers built-in note templates including SOAP, DAP, BIRP, Simple Note, Client Progress Note, Discharge/Termination of Services Note, EMDR Progress Note, and Group Therapy Progress Note. It also lets users create their own custom note templates in My Forms. That makes the setup choice pretty straightforward. If you are using one of the standard Sessions note formats, start with the closest built-in LocalScribe template. If you use custom forms, or you want the draft to match your Sessions structure more closely, build a LocalScribe custom template with the same headers, order, and section logic.

Progress notes

This is often the easiest fit. Because Sessions already supports SOAP, DAP, and BIRP note templates, built-in LocalScribe templates may work well for many clinicians. Sessions also supports custom note templates, though, so if your note structure has been adapted to your practice style, it makes more sense to mirror that structure in a LocalScribe custom progress-note template.

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.

Progress toward objectives: Briefly note movement, setbacks, or unchanged patterns related to current treatment-plan objectives.

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

Sessions supports customizable intake forms with custom fields and structure, so intake is often a strong LocalScribe custom-template category. Their documentation and marketing materials describe custom forms that can include fields like dropdowns, checkboxes, and text areas, which means the intake structure can vary meaningfully from one practice to another. If you want the narrative output to match the way you actually collect information in Sessions, mirroring that structure in LocalScribe makes sense.

A practical intake template in LocalScribe might use:

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

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.

Strengths and supports: Identify personal strengths, coping resources, motivation, and important supports.

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

Treatment plans

Treatment plans are another strong custom-template category in Sessions. The platform supports custom treatment plans, and treatment-plan objectives can carry forward automatically into progress notes. Sessions also describes treatment plans as something users can build with templates or create from scratch, which makes close structural matching a good reason to use a LocalScribe custom template.

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.

Frequency and review plan: Document expected session frequency, coordination needs, and when progress will be reviewed.

Useful special cases

Sessions also includes built-in templates for Group Therapy Progress Notes and EMDR Progress Notes. That is worth noticing because it gives you a clean starting point for modality-specific or setting-specific documentation without having to invent the structure from scratch. If your group or EMDR documentation already follows a predictable format in Sessions, it is often easy to build a matching LocalScribe custom template or start with the closest built-in structure and refine from there.

A simple group-note template might use:

Group focus: State the theme, intervention focus, or purpose of the session.

Client participation: Describe the client’s engagement, behavior, and level of participation in the group.

Clinical observations: Document relevant affect, interaction style, regulation, and other observed responses.

Progress and plan: Summarize progress related to treatment goals and any follow-up needs.

A simple EMDR-oriented template might use:

Target and phase work: Document the target memory, current phase of treatment, and focus of the session.

Client response: Summarize emotional, cognitive, somatic, and behavioral responses during processing.

Clinical observations: Document regulation, tolerance, blocks, shifts, and therapist observations.

Plan: Include resourcing, homework, follow-up, and next-session focus.

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, screeners, questionnaires, prior documents, and any clinician observations not captured elsewhere. 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 Sessions Health, built-in LocalScribe templates work well for many standard note types. Intake, treatment plans, EMDR or group workflows with a preferred structure, and any customized Sessions workflow are often better handled with a LocalScribe custom template that mirrors the form or template you already use in Sessions.