EMR Charting: Examples and Templates

Jocelyn Gulliver

April 25, 2025•16 min read

Fact checked by Dr. Ben Condon

EMR Charting Template

This EMR charting template is designed to help you capture a complete snapshot of your patient’s clinical information across different types of visits. When used with Heidi, it enhances your documentation workflow by:

Organizing key data fields such as demographics, past medical history, medications, allergies, immunizations, and provider notes, ensuring nothing gets missed during back-to-back consultations.
Adapting to different clinical contexts — whether you’re onboarding a new patient with complex comorbidities or updating a follow-up visit after a recent hospitalization, this EMR charting template guides you through to focus on what matters the most for your patient.
Supporting seamless transitions of care by maintaining consistent, legible documentation that rest of your team members can easily pick up.

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What is EMR Charting?

EMR charting, or Electronic Medical Record charting, refers to the digital documentation of patient interactions within an institution’s EMR system. This process includes filing patients’ comprehensive data, such as medical history, diagnoses, treatment plans, and the clinicians who managed them.

Compared to traditional paper charting, EMR charting helps create a centralized and instantly accessible repository of medical data before or after a clinical encounter.

In this article, we’ll walk through the common challenges of EMR charting, the benefits of leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) for EMR charting, the types of AI-powered EMR charting, and the efficiency of using AI-enabled EMR charting templates.

Plus, you’ll get access to free and customizable EMR charting templates designed to help you save time and enhance clinical documentation workflows across different specialties.

Common Challenges of EMR Charting

While EMR charting has led to significant improvements in healthcare documentation, the system is not without drawbacks. With this, here are the most frequently reported EMR charting challenges that affect both clinician satisfaction and patient care outcomes:

Excessive Documentation Requirements

One of the most common challenges shared by clinicians using EMR charting is the sheer volume of documentation required, especially for satisfying administrative and legal and compliance standards.

EMRs often demand input across data fields, many of which are sometimes deemed not relevant to a particular encounter but are required for coding purposes. This leads to longer charting, increased cognitive load, and less time for focused patient care, ultimately leading to physician burnout.

Alert Fatigue

Charting with EMR tools sometimes generates numerous alerts and notifications, which can overwhelm clinicians. The potential alert fatigue may cause highly critical warnings to be overlooked, potentially compromising patient safety.

Insufficient Training and Support

Another concern for clinicians is being underprepared when transitioning to new EMR charting processes. Without proper support, users struggle to troubleshoot issues and navigate evolving interfaces. A recent guide on EMR implementation emphasized that a lack of proper training is a leading contributor to clinician dissatisfaction, reduced productivity, and a higher risk of charting errors.

Interoperability Issues

Many EMR charting systems can’t seamlessly share data across different platforms, making it difficult for providers to access a complete view of a patient’s history, especially when care is split across multiple clinics or hospitals.

Poor interoperability remains one of the biggest barriers to efficient healthcare delivery, creating unnecessary administrative burdens and compromising care coordination.

To help address these challenges, AI has been rapidly adopted into EMR charting systems and has already influenced major improvements to the above challenges.

Key Benefits of EMR Charting with AI

According to the latest survey by the American Medical Association (AMA), 66% of physicians reported using AI for tasks such as charting, billing code documentation, and visit notes, which is a significant increase from 38% a couple of years ago.

As adoption grows, AI continues to play a central role in shaping a more modern, responsive approach to EMR charting. Below are some of the most impactful ways AI is enhancing the EMR charting process for clinicians:

Reduces Documentation Time

AI-powered tools can significantly reduce the time clinicians spend on documentation. This report found that AI-assisted charting reduced documentation time by up to 40%, allowing providers to allocate more time to direct patient care.

Enhances Note Accuracy and Consistency

AI tools help create more complete, structured, and accurate notes. This review, published in the Journal of Medical Systems, concluded that AI-enhanced documentation systems significantly improve the clarity and consistency of clinical records while reducing the overall documentation burden.

Helps Improve Clinician Satisfaction

Many healthcare professionals report that using AI in EMR charting workflows helped them feel more in control of their workload and better able to focus on patient care. As a result, AI-powered tools like Heidi are increasingly seen not just as time-savers, but as contributors to a more balanced and less stressful work environment.

Streamlines Workflow and Reduces Burnout

By automating routine documentation tasks, AI lessens cognitive and administrative burdens. According to the AMA survey, physician use of AI for charting nearly doubled, rising from 13% in previous years to 21% in recent years, with many reporting that it helped reduce daily workload and burnout.

Facilitates Better Patient Care

With less time spent documenting, clinicians can be more present with their patients. Hospitals integrating AI into EMR systems saw improvements in both patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes thanks to more focused provider attention.

Types of AI-powered EMR Charting

AI-powered EMR charting can take on multiple shapes depending on how you prefer to work. Whether you're in a clinic, on a laptop at home, or reviewing patient notes while on-the-go, the right AI tool adapts to your workflow.

Below are 6 types of AI-powered EMR charting via Heidi, the AI most-loved AI scribe handling over 1 million patient consultation every week:

1. Web-Based App

Web-based EMR charting apps offer flexibility without the need for installations, which is especially perfect for clinical teams with multiple locations and remote team members. With a Heid’s web-based app, you can securely log in from any browser and easily conduct AI-enabled EMR charting.

2. Desktop App

For clinicians who prefer a more stable environment, Heidi’s desktop version runs locally for faster performance. Available for both Windows and Mac systems, it integrates seamlessly into your workstation setup, helping you keep charting more effectively.

3. Mobile App

Need to do EMR charting on the go or quickly review notes between rounds? Heidi’s mobile-friendly app for both Android and iOS devices makes it easy to capture and review patient details wherever you are.

4. Browser Extension

Sometimes the simplest solution is the one that works right within your web-based EMR. Heidi’s browser extension overlays directly on top of your current EMR, letting you chart, summarize, and refine notes without switching tabs or screens.

Heidi also offers a system widget that lives within your EMR’s desktop or tablet screen, so you can start transcribing or generating summaries with just one click.

6. Direct Integration

For practices that want a truly embedded solution, Heidi can be directly integrated into your EMR system. This creates a fully native experience where AI-powered documentation runs in the background, surfacing structured notes as you go.

The Efficiency of Using AI-enabled EMR Charting Templates

By generating real-time, context-aware drafts based on what’s said or entered during the visit, AI-enabled EMR charting templates can eliminate the need to build notes from scratch and leverage the other powerful benefits of today’s technology. Here’s how these smart templates can boost EMR charting efficiency:

Minimize Typing

AI listens or pulls from structured data to generate your EMR note automatically, reducing the need to manually type out findings, history, or treatment plans. This saves significant time during each patient interaction and reduces the strain of repetitive data entry.

Skip Template Guesswork

Instead of manually selecting from dozens of templates or duplicating past notes, AI can help identify the appropriate format based on the context of the visit. This makes the process more intuitive and keeps your focus on clinical thinking.

Reduce Editing Time

EMR charting notes assisted by AI are already pre-formatted and logically structured, so there’s less need for cleanup. Sections like HPI, A/P, and patient instructions are already in place and filled out based on the conversation, reducing the time you spend reorganizing or rewriting.

Keep Your Voice

One of the standout benefits of AI-enabled EMR note templates is how they learn and reflect your documentation style. Whether you prefer full sentences, shorthand, or bullet points, the system adapts over time to match your tone, so the note still feels like you wrote it yourself.

EMR Charting Template Example

As AI continues to reshape the way clinicians document care, the next step is deciding on a powerful solution that delivers real efficiency into EMR charting while fitting naturally into your workflow.

This is where Heidi comes in. Whether you’re just getting started with AI-powered EMR charting or looking to simplify your current processes, Heidi offers a smarter and more intuitive way to transition without disrupting the way you practice.

Transition Smoothly Into EMR Charting with Heidi

Moving to EMR charting doesn’t have to mean more clicks or more admin work. Heidi is here to help you ease into digital documentation by working alongside your existing workflow, so you can stay focused on high-quality patient care. Here's how:

Transcribe – Heidi listens during every patient visit and captures key clinical details in real time, so you’re not stuck trying to remember everything after the fact or switching between talking and typing mid-consult.
Transform – Your notes are automatically organized into structured EMR charting fields like history, assessment, and plan, helping make sure you’re ready and compliant for billing, referrals, or handovers without extra formatting work.
Customize – Heidi works closely with your team to tailor the platform to your specific workflow. From adjusting EMR charting templates to fit your charting style to adding custom fields like follow-up steps or patient education points, Heidi helps make documentation feel like a natural part of how you already work.

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This level of hands-on support made all the difference for Shanan Nelson, Director and Senior Physiotherapist at SANA Physiotherapy. After learning about AI-driven documentation at a conference, he decided to trial Heidi to see if it could ease the admin load in his fast-paced clinic.

"The thing I really liked was how much input we had from the team at Heidi. The way it fit into our business was a game-changer."

From setup to day-to-day use, Heidi worked closely with Shanan’s team to adapt the platform to their exact workflow: automating note-taking, generating patient summaries, and sending GP letters almost instantly. The result? Hours saved each week and a noticeable drop in the physical strain that comes with constant typing.

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Free EMR Charting Templates

EMR Charting Template for Inpatient Stays

This EMR charting template helps providers capture a complete overview of a patient’s hospital stay, from admission to discharge. Include hospital course details, surgeries, labs, vitals, medications, and more, to ensure smooth care coordination and follow-up planning within inpatient settings.

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Hospital Admission EMR Charting Template

Make the admission process easier with this structured EMR charting template built for GPs and hospital staff. It captures important details like patient demographics, insurance, and medical history, helping ensure smooth handovers from referrals and accurate, compliant documentation.

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EMR Charting Template for Patient Intakes

Gather comprehensive information during initial visits with this efficient intake template for EMR charting. Ideal for nurses and frontline staff, it captures lifestyle factors, current concerns, and medical history, creating a reliable foundation for ongoing care in clinics or hospitals.

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FAQs About EMR Charting

How does EMR charting contribute to patient safety?

EMR charting helps keep patients safer by making sure all their important health info (e.g. meds, allergies, past visits) is recorded clearly and easy to find. It cuts down on mistakes, helps doctors make better decisions, and keeps everyone on the care team on the same page. Also, when everything’s in one place, it’s easier to catch issues early and avoid things slipping through the cracks.

What are some best practices for training staff on EMR charting?

Some best practices to train staff on EMR charting are to keep it as real as possible and walk them through common scenarios they might actually encounter. Start simple, go step-by-step, and give your team sufficient time to practice. Having cheat sheets and quick tips nearby helps, too. And don’t forget follow-up support!

What is the best format for EMR charting notes?

Generally, the best format for EMR charting notes includes sections for patient information, session details, presenting issues, observations, interventions, patient responses, and next steps. Heidi helps streamline the process by auto-populating relevant data based on recorded sessions, reducing manual entry, and ensuring accuracy while maintaining clinician oversight to finalize and edit the content.

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