HIPAA and PHIPA compliant client intake forms | Blog

Intake forms are essential for any psychology practice, but creating a digital form that meets HIPAA or PHIPA compliance can be difficult if you want to stay compliant. Thankfully, PsychMeter's custom questionnaire feature makes this process simple and straightforward. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to create a compliant intake form quickly and easily.

Create a custom Form

Start by signing up or logging into PsychMeter. From the dashboard, click on "Custom" at the top, then select the "New" button. This will open a new custom questionnaire that you can tailor as your intake form.

You'll need to name your form and indicate whether it will be scored. For example, I’ll call mine "Client Intake Form" and select "No" for scoring. If you're interested in creating a scored intake form, stay tuned—I'll cover that in a future post. At this stage, your questionnaire should look something like this:

Short answer questions

For this intake form, I’m including the following questions:

Email address
Phone number
A brief description of what brought them to the practice
How they heard about the practice
A description of the issues they’re facing
Any previous mental health diagnoses or hospitalizations
Current medications
Previous therapy experiences and what worked/didn't work
Preferences for therapist gender or availability

Start by adding the first four questions as "Short Answer" type questions. To do this, click "Add an instruction or question," select "Short Answer," and enter the question text. Repeat this process for each of the basic questions. It should look something like this:

Multiple choice questions

The next question, "have they had a previous mental health diagnosis or hospitalization," we'll show as two yes/no questions. You can add these by clicking the green "add instruction or question" button, selecting "multiple choice question" and providing the questions with the associated answers. We'll do the same for the question about medication as well. It should look something like this:

Conditional questions

Some questions may require conditional logic—for example, asking about past therapy experiences. First, create a multiple-choice question: "Have you had therapy before?" If the client answers "Yes," follow up with additional questions about what worked or didn’t work. To set up these follow-up questions, use the "Show When" dropdown, select "Only When," and specify the relevant question and answer.

Finalizing the form

Once you’ve added all your questions, save the form. You can now search for, send, and review the results of your questionnaire just like any other in PsychMeter.

Additional helpful function

PsychMeter provides several handy options for managing your questionnaires:

Edit: Modify questions before a questionnaire is filled out.
Delete: Remove a questionnaire from your active list while retaining collected data.
Duplicate: Create a new version based on an existing form, saving time on creating similar forms.

You’ll also find options for individual questions:

Move Up/Down: Reorder questions easily.
Duplicate: Replicate a question to reuse or tweak it for later.
Delete: Remove a question entirely.

I hope this guide helps you confidently create intake forms that meet compliance requirements and suit your practice’s needs. If you have feedback or questions, feel free to reach out here.