I Tracked Every Minute I Spent on SOAP Notes for 30 Days. The Results Changed How I Practice.

Dr. Sarah Chen thought she was efficient. Twenty years in practice, a streamlined patient flow, a competent front desk. But when a colleague challenged her to actually track her documentation time, what she found made her question everything.

47 hours per month. Just on SOAP notes.

That's not a typo. And if you're a chiropractor reading this, your number might be similar—or worse.

The 30-Day Documentation Audit

Here's how the experiment worked: For one month, Dr. Chen used a simple timer app. Every time she started a SOAP note, she hit start. When she finished, she stopped. No cheating, no rounding down.

The raw numbers:

| Metric | Result |

|--------|--------|

| Total documentation time | 47.3 hours |

| Average notes per day | 28 |

| Average time per note | 5.1 minutes |

| Total notes written | 589 |

Five minutes doesn't sound bad, right? But multiply that across 28 patients a day, 21 working days a month, and suddenly you're staring at a part-time job you never applied for.

Where the Time Actually Goes

Breaking down those 5.1 minutes per note:

Opening the chart and template: 30 seconds
Typing subjective findings: 1.5 minutes
Documenting objective findings: 1.5 minutes
Writing assessment: 45 seconds
Typing the plan: 30 seconds
Reviewing and fixing errors: 25 seconds

The shocking part? Only about 3 minutes involved actual clinical thinking. The rest was just... typing. Clicking. Navigating software. Mechanical work that added zero value to patient care.

The Real Cost of Documentation

Let's do uncomfortable math.

Time cost:

47 hours/month = 564 hours/year
That's 14 full work weeks spent typing

Financial cost:

If you value your time at $150/hour (conservative for a DC):

564 hours × $150 = $84,600/year

That's not revenue you're missing—it's the value of your time that could go toward:

Seeing 10 more patients per week
Actually taking a lunch break
Leaving the office before 7pm
Building the practice you imagined in chiropractic school

Health cost:

The part nobody talks about. Those 47 hours often happen:

During lunch
After the last patient
At home, after the kids are in bed
On weekends

It's not documentation. It's slow-motion burnout.

Why Traditional Solutions Don't Work

Dr. Chen had tried everything:

Templates: Helped a little, but even good SOAP note templates can't capture what's unique about each visit. Copy-paste notes are a compliance risk and, frankly, lazy medicine.

Scribes: At $15-25/hour, that's another $30K+ per year. Plus training, turnover, and HIPAA concerns with another person accessing records.

Typing faster: There's a ceiling. And it usually comes with wrist pain.

Shorter notes: Dangerous territory. Insurance audits don't care that you were tired.

The problem isn't efficiency. The problem is that typing is the wrong input method for clinical documentation.

The Voice-to-Text Shift

Voice-to-text technology has come a long way—and here's what finally worked: Stop typing entirely.

The logic is simple. When you examine a patient, you're already narrating in your head:

"Decreased ROM in cervical spine, about 30% restriction in rotation. Tenderness at C5-6. Adjusted with diversified technique, good cavitation..."

Why translate that internal narration into typing? Why not just... say it?

Modern AI can take a 30-second voice memo and output a properly formatted SOAP note. Not a rough draft. A finished note with:

Correct section headers (S/O/A/P)
Appropriate medical terminology
Proper sentence structure
ICD-10 friendly language

The Results After Switching

Dr. Chen switched to voice-based documentation. New numbers after 30 days:

|--------|--------|-------|--------|

| Time per note | 5.1 min | 1.2 min | -76% |

| Monthly doc time | 47.3 hrs | 11.8 hrs | -75% |

| Notes completed same-day | 62% | 98% | +36% |

| Evening/weekend doc | 8.2 hrs | 0.4 hrs | -95% |

The math changed:

35 hours/month saved
420 hours/year back
Equivalent to $63,000 in time value

But the numbers don't capture the real change. For the first time in years, she left the office when the last patient left. Charts were done. Nothing hanging over her head.

What Makes Voice Documentation Work

Not all voice-to-text is created equal. Generic dictation (like Dragon) just transcribes what you say. You still have to structure it, edit it, format it.

The breakthrough is AI that understands clinical documentation:

You speak naturally: "Patient reports low back pain, about a 5 out of 10, better than last week when it was a 7. Did some adjustments to L4-L5, good response, decreased muscle tension after."

AI structures it:

> Subjective: Patient reports low back pain rated 5/10, improved from 7/10 at previous visit.

> Objective: Chiropractic manipulative treatment performed to L4-L5 segments. Post-adjustment examination reveals decreased paraspinal muscle tension.

> Assessment: Lumbar segmental dysfunction, responding favorably to treatment.

> Plan: Continue current treatment frequency. Patient to perform home exercises as prescribed.

You review and sign: 15 seconds of review instead of 5 minutes of typing.

The Objections (And Reality)

"Voice notes won't be detailed enough."

Actually, they're often more detailed. When you're typing, you abbreviate. When you're speaking, you naturally include more context because talking is faster than typing.

"What about privacy? I can't dictate in front of patients."

Most docs dictate between patients or at the end of the day. A 30-second voice memo while walking to the next room captures everything while it's fresh.

"I'll still have to edit everything."

Modern AI trained on medical documentation rarely needs major edits. You're reviewing, not rewriting.

"It's probably expensive."

Less than a scribe. Less than the overtime you're paying yourself. Less than the revenue from two extra patients per week.

Making the Switch

If you're spending more than 2 minutes per SOAP note, you're leaving time on the table. Here's how to test voice documentation:

Track your current baseline. Time yourself for one week. No judgment, just data.

Try voice documentation on 10 notes. See how long it actually takes once you get the hang of speaking your notes.

Do the math. If you can save even 30 minutes per day, that's 10+ hours per month. What would you do with that time?

The Bottom Line

Documentation is part of the job. But it shouldn't BE the job.

47 hours per month typing notes is 47 hours not spent with family, not spent on the business, not spent recovering from the mental load of seeing 25+ patients a day.

The chiropractors who figure this out aren't working harder. They're just not spending their evenings typing what they already know.

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Related: New to SOAP documentation? Read our guide on how to write perfect SOAP notes.

Ready to see how voice-to-text SOAP notes work in practice? Try ChiroScribe free for 7 days — generate your first note in under 60 seconds.