Jane gives you the tools to keep clinical notes private, signed, and easy to track, from chart privacy settings to locked charts and the Activity Log. Your clinic is still responsible for meeting its own compliance requirements, and here's what's available to support you.
Basic Charting Privacy Options
Every chart in Jane has its own privacy setting. Set the default chart privacy level for each staff member, and share individual charts with other staff when needed, for example, when a locum needs temporary access. For the full setup steps, see our guide on Charting Privacy Options.
🩵 Jane Tip: Under HIPAA, psychotherapy notes have stricter access protections than standard progress notes and must be kept separate from the patient's medical record. Jane's Psychotherapy Notes feature gives US 🇺🇸 behavioral health practitioners a dedicated private workspace for these notes. Access is restricted to the authoring practitioner only, and no other staff member, including the Account Owner, can view them.
Chart Content Requirements
Practitioners are typically required to document clinical details as well as other information such as name, birth date, address, phone contact information, family doctor, medications, referral source, and informed consent for treatment and information recording.
Jane supports this in a few ways:
- Build your own intake form
- Build your own chart template
- Borrow a template from Jane's Chart Template Library
- Store required details on each patient's Patient Profile
For details on servers, encryption, data residency, and more, see the Cloud Security White Paper.
Adding an Electronic Signature to Your Staff Profile
To add an electronic signature in Jane, follow these steps. Once complete, your signature is saved to your staff profile and used to lock signed charts.
- Create your signature file. Sign your name on paper and photograph it, keeping the photo close to the signature to avoid excess white space, or create one electronically using an Online Signature tool.
- Go to your Staff Profile.
- Click Edit to open profile settings.
- Click the Settings tab.
- Upload your signature file in the signature field.
- Click Save.
If you don't see a preview of your signature after uploading, try a different file type.
What to Expect
Once a chart is signed by the practitioner, it becomes locked and time-stamped. Any corrections made are handled via signed amendments to preserve the legal record while still reflecting patient-requested corrections.
Locked charts show a locked padlock icon so you can tell at a glance which entries are signed and which are still drafts. For more on how this appears on your schedule, see Sign and Lock Workflow.
📣 Heads up: Most regulatory bodies and/or licensing boards require that an electronic system storing personal health information be designed so original notes can't be altered, deleted, or removed from view. Staying compliant is your clinic's legal responsibility, and Jane is built to support chart integrity.
Chart Amendments
If a practitioner needs to adjust a chart after it's signed, Jane allows a dated Amendment to be added to that chart. Once saved, an Amendment becomes a permanent, uneditable part of the chart, in the same way a saved and signed chart entry is locked. You can add multiple Amendments if further changes are needed. Each one is locked individually once saved and signed.
Adding a Supervisor Sign-Off to a Chart Template
When a practitioner is in training, or when a discipline's regulations require supervision by another medical professional, create a supervisory relationship between their staff profiles in Jane. Common examples include students, interim practitioners awaiting registration, and staff whose chart notes require a Medical Director's signature.
Go to Settings > Supervision to create the relationship. If you don't see the Supervision tab, ask a Full Access user to create it. Supervisors can then locate, review, leave feedback on, request changes to, and sign off on chart notes for supervised staff. After a supervisee requests a supervisor's signature, the chart cannot be edited until the supervisor signs and locks it or sends it back for changes.
See Setting up a Supervisory Relationship and the Supervision Hub.
Time-stamping
Jane adds a timestamp, including the practitioner's name, the date and the time, just before a chart is signed and locked. If a chart entry gets recorded under the wrong appointment date, you can associate a signed and locked chart with a different appointment date, though the health information itself stays uneditable. For draft charts, changing the date also updates the signature and timestamp to reflect when the chart is eventually locked. For the full workflow, see Charting for a Past Date.
Staff Access Levels
Chart access permissions are a critical part of staying compliant. Jane's Account Owner controls which staff members can access which parts of Jane through six Staff Access Levels, ranging from No Access to Full Access.
Tracking and Auditing Activity
To review who made changes to your account and when, follow these steps.
- Go to Reports.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page.
- Click Activity Log.
What to Expect
The Account Owner and staff with Full Access or Administrative/All Billing permissions see activity across the clinic, and all other staff see only their own activity. See Activity Log.
Important Notes
- Compliance requirements, including minimum retention periods for health records, vary by discipline, region, and jurisdiction. This guide is a general summary, not legal advice.
- Locked charts, including signed entries and saved Amendments, can never be edited. Corrections must be added as a new Amendment.