Quality Improvement Project: Improving intake forms to make them more readable for patients in an urban clinic setting

In the landscape of increasing demands on physician and staff time, intake forms are frequently utilized to gather information before the start of the clinical encounter. These forms typically contain information on reason for visit, allergies, current medications, pertinent health history, abbreviated review of systems and important social history. We assessed a sample of the intake forms at our clinic and found that 63% of the time the forms were not filled out at all. A resident poll showed that 75% of residents felt the forms were not useful.