The baseline
The measurement taken at assessment, in the same units you are about to quote now. A report that says "improved" without saying from what is an opinion.
Blog
How to write a physiotherapy report: SOAP and progress notes
A report is read by someone who was not in the room. What it has to contain is decided by them — the referrer deciding whether to send the next patient, the insurer deciding whether to pay, the colleague covering your Thursday.
The two documents people confuse
A session note and a report are not the same thing, and writing one when the other was asked for is the most common reason a report gets sent back. The session note records what happened today. The report answers a question somebody outside the clinic has asked: is this working, should it continue, and what will it cost.
SOAP is a format for the first. Subjective — what the patient reports. Objective — what you measured. Assessment — what you make of it. Plan — what happens next. It is useful precisely because it separates what you were told from what you found, which is the distinction an insurer will look for first.
A progress report is the second. It summarises a block of sessions against the goals set at the start, and it lives or dies on whether those goals were written down in a form that can be compared to today.
What a reader outside the clinic needs
The same measure, repeated
Range of motion, pain score, functional scale — whichever you chose, taken at the same points each time. Changing instrument halfway makes the block uncomparable.
Attendance against plan
Six of twelve delivered is a different report from twelve of twelve, and the difference explains most outcomes without any clinical reasoning at all.
What you are asking for
Discharge, extension, referral on. A report that describes without recommending leaves the decision to somebody with less information than you.
Writing it so it can be written again
The practical problem with reports is not the first one. It is the fortieth, in a week where three referrers want one. That is a template problem rather than a writing problem.
A template that carries the baseline forward, pulls in the sessions actually delivered and plots the repeated measure turns a report from an hour of assembly into a paragraph of judgement. Everything above the judgement is already in the record — if the record was structured for it.
Which is the argument for charting the measure rather than describing it. A number entered in the same field each session can be plotted; the same number inside a paragraph cannot, and at session twelve somebody is reading twelve paragraphs.
Questions
What is the difference between SOAP notes and a progress report?
A SOAP note documents one session and is written for the record. A progress report summarises a block of sessions against the goals set at assessment, and is written for somebody outside the clinic — usually a referrer or an insurer.
How often should a progress report be written?
At the points the referrer or the funder asks for, and at discharge. For a twelve session block, a report at six and at twelve is common, because six is early enough to change the plan.
What makes an insurer reject a physiotherapy report?
Most often: no baseline to compare against, a measure that changed partway through the block, or attendance that does not match what was claimed. All three are record problems rather than writing problems.
Should the patient see the report?
The parts that describe their progress, usually yes — it is the most effective conversation about attendance you will have. Clinical reasoning aimed at a referrer is a separate matter and is normally kept separate.
See it on your own clinic
Thirty minutes on how your clinic actually runs. We will call you within 24 hours.