What you’re looking at
Each row is marked with what it is: Signature request — prepared with the signing builder, and selecting it opens its tracking page (see Prepare a document for signature) — or Document, a consent form or agreement sent from one of your templates with the earlier signing links. Every row has the same status pill:
Empty state. A hospital that has sent nothing shows “Nothing has been sent for signature yet.” with Send a document for signature.
Before you start
Two prerequisites, and both stop you dead rather than failing quietly:- An active template must exist. Templates are kept in Settings → Patient Experience → Sharable Documents.
- For a document from one of your templates, the patient must have an email address on file. The chart warns “⚠️ This patient does not have an email address. Please update their profile before sending documents.”, and sending is refused with “Selected patient does not have an email address”. A form or a signature request can still reach a patient with no address — through their portal, or in person on this device.
Send a document for signature
1
Find the patient
Open Patient records, find the person, and open the row’s ⋯ menu.
2
Select Send to patient
The Send intakes sheet opens — the same one the patient’s own record uses — on its first step, with the patient’s name and the address it will go to. Check that address before going further.
3
Choose what to send
One list, in groups: Packs, Forms (published forms that go to a patient or by private link) and Signable documents (ready to send, with a signer and at least one field) when your hospital has any, then Consent documents, Clinical outcomes & measures, Questionnaires & intakes, and Clinical templates when you have your own. Tick as many as you need. The templates you tick go in one email together; each form and each document to sign arrives as its own invitation. Anything the patient already has open is marked, so the same consent does not go out twice. A signature request that someone else signs as well — a witness, a clinician — asks on the next step who signs each part: A specific staff member, A named person outside the clinic, or The appointment’s provider when you started from an appointment.
4
Add context
Continue to email takes you to Compose email, where the subject and message are yours to change. Say why they are being asked to sign: a consent form arriving with no explanation is a consent form that does not get signed.
5
Send
Review & confirm, then send. The patient gets one email with their own links, and each document appears on eSignatures at Sent. The confirmation names what went and what did not — an item that was skipped, and why, is said rather than counted as sent.
Follow it up
On eSignatures, a Document row’s ⋯ menu offers:1
View
What was sent, when, and where it has got to.
2
Resend
The document opens with the patient and its content filled in; check them and select Send Document. It goes out again as a new document with its own link, and the earlier link keeps working until it expires or is revoked from the patient’s record.
3
Download
A PDF of the document, marked as not yet signed when it is not. Not offered on a cancelled document.
A template your hospital has converted to a form is sent as that form. Once a template has been converted with Convert to form and the form published, it can no longer be sent as a document — not from Resend, the Send intakes sheet, an assistant or an appointment default — and you are told which form replaces it. Templates that have not been converted keep sending as before.
Who can do this
Role decides whether the ledger opens: owners, managers, doctors, nurses and receptionists pass, and anyone else is told they do not have permission. Forms needs the Records care area in Settings → Facility, and on Enterprise an owner controls which roles see the Records group under Settings → Role Navigation. Inside, what each person may do is decided by the Forms permissions in their staff permissions, plus your plan:
Enforcement is opt-in per person — a colleague never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing” before it starts applying. A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. Hiding Forms from a role is a convenience, not a security boundary.
Check it worked
- The document is on eSignatures, marked Document, at Sent.
- When the patient opens it the status becomes In progress; when they sign it becomes Completed and the signed copy is on their chart.
- A resent document is a new row at the top of the list.
Common issues
Converted to the form — send the form instead
Converted to the form — send the form instead
That template has been converted to a published form, so it is no longer sent as a document. Send the form instead. An appointment default still naming the template sends nothing until an owner or manager chooses Use this form here in Settings → Patient Experience → Sharable Documents.
The patient does not have an email address
The patient does not have an email address
Documents from your templates are delivered by email. Add the address to their record, then send — see Patient records. A form or a signature request can instead go Portal only — no email when the patient has portal access, or be completed In person, on this device.
The patient says they never got the email
The patient says they never got the email
Ask them to check spam first. If it is genuinely missing, confirm the address on their record, revoke access to the outstanding document from their record and send a new one. A patient with portal access can also open it from the portal without the email.
The list looks shorter than I expected
The list looks shorter than I expected
eSignatures shows ten rows a page, newest first. Use the page controls under the list, or show more rows per page.
FAQ
Can I upload a file I already have and send that for signature?
Can I upload a file I already have and send that for signature?
Yes. On eSignatures, select Send a document for signature, then Upload a new document — see Prepare a document for signature.
Where does a signed copy go?
Where does a signed copy go?
Onto the patient’s record, in their files. Nothing needs filing by hand — that is what keeps the Unfiled queue on the records desk short.
Can I send the same document to several patients at once?
Can I send the same document to several patients at once?
Not from one action. Documents are sent per patient, because each one carries that patient’s own signing link.
How long does a signing link last?
How long does a signing link last?
Long enough for a reasonable reply, then it expires — and your hospital’s expiring-within threshold, set under Settings → Facility, decides when the records desk starts flagging it.
Does a declined document need anything from me?
Does a declined document need anything from me?
Not in the product. A refusal to sign is a clinical and administrative conversation, not a status to clear — decide with the clinician what happens next.