You don't have to wait for the complete file to start an assessment report. With Soma, psychologists upload what they have now, add the score reports after testing day and the school records when they finally arrive, approve only the new documents each time, and land back in the same report. The draft builds as the file builds, so the last document no longer starts the writing.
That sounds like a small feature. The psychologists I talk to describe it as a change in the shape of their week, and that's why I wanted to write it up properly.
I'm not a clinician, so I won't tell you how to run an assessment. What I can describe is how the file usually arrives, what psychologists have told me about waiting on it, and the workflow we shipped in September so that the waiting stops holding up the report.
Why does the report usually wait for the last document?
Because the report needs everything, and everything almost never arrives together.
The sequence psychologists describe to me is remarkably consistent. The referral and the intake come first. Then the testing day, or days, and the scoring. Then the outside documents: school records, report cards, questionnaires from teachers and parents, a letter from another professional, sometimes a previous assessment. The last of those can take weeks, and it's usually the one you can't chase any faster.
So the writing gets parked until the folder is full. By the time it is, the intake is weeks old, the testing day is a memory you're reconstructing from your own notes, and the report becomes one long block of work that starts from zero, often on an evening or a weekend. I wrote about where that block of time goes in why psychological report writing takes so long. One registered psychologist put the size of it plainly: "My 40 page reports take me probably more than 15 hours."
Another psychologist put the whole problem in one line:
"This is the only part of the assessment process that hangs me up. I know the rest of it's great."
The school records arrive when they arrive. The report doesn't have to wait for them.
What does an assessment file look like as it arrives?
Every practice is different, but the file tends to come in waves like these:
- Week one. The referral letter, the intake forms, and your intake interview notes. If you used Soma's session transcription for the intake, that transcript and note are already in Soma too.
- After testing. The protocols and score reports, once scoring is done.
- The weeks after. School records, report cards, teacher and parent questionnaires, collateral letters, any earlier assessment.
- Along the way. Your own impressions: what you noticed on testing day, what the family said in the waiting room, what the teacher mentioned on the phone.
Each wave is a reasonable amount of reading on its own. Put together at the end, they become the pile that makes the report feel impossible to start.
How do you add files to a report over several days?
Here is the workflow in Soma, step by step.
- Start the case with what you have. Upload the referral and intake documents. Identifiers are removed before any AI sees the text, and you review and approve those redactions.
- Come back when the scores are in. Choose "Add more files" and upload the score reports and protocols.
- Approve only the new batch. Soma shows you just the new files. The documents you approved last week are marked as already approved and stay exactly as they were.
- Land back in the same report. Not a new case, and not a fresh upload of everything you sent before.
- Repeat when the school records arrive. Same steps, same report.
If you transcribed a session in Soma, you can also pull those notes or transcripts into the report as a source. You choose each one, and it goes through the same approval step as an uploaded document.
What can you get done before the file is complete?
More than you'd think, and none of it involves making a call before the evidence is in.
Draft from what's there. You can generate a draft from the documents you have. When the next batch arrives, regenerate, and the draft reads the new documents too. My own suggestion is to save your careful line edits for the end, and use the early drafts to see what's there.
See the gaps early. An early draft shows you what the file doesn't have yet. A thin background section in week two is a prompt to chase the school records. The same gap discovered the weekend before the deadline is a much worse problem.
Write your impressions down while they're fresh. Soma wasn't in the room on testing day. You were. You can add a note to the report in your own words, and the draft is told to use it. A few lines written the evening after testing is very different from trying to remember the same detail three weeks later.
Ask the file what's in it. The assistant can summarize what's arrived so far or lay it out as a timeline, which is a quick way to get back up to speed on a case you haven't opened in a week.
A file that arrives in pieces can be read in pieces.
What changes when the last document doesn't start the writing?
The work spreads out. Instead of one long block at the end, the report moves forward in small steps as the file fills: twenty minutes after the intake, a check-in after scoring, a pass once the school records land.
The biggest difference is what the final week looks like. When the last document arrives, you're not starting a report. You're adding one more batch to a draft that already has most of the file in it, regenerating, and moving on to the part only you can do. For a full file, Soma gets a first draft ready in about 45 minutes. When most of the file is already in, the last step is shorter still.
Psychologists have told me the hardest part of the old pattern wasn't the hours. It was that the hours landed in the evenings and on weekends, which I wrote about in why psychologists end up writing reports on weekends. Spreading the work out doesn't make the thinking any smaller. It moves it back into the working week.
What still has to wait for the complete file?
Your conclusions. The summary, the interpretation and the recommendations bring everything together, and they're yours to write. A draft can scaffold those sections and suggest possible wording, but the clinical read belongs to the psychologist who has seen all of the evidence.
So the last pass is still a real pass. Before you sign, read the whole report against the whole file, check that the newest documents are reflected where they should be, and change anything you'd say differently. You review every section, you edit it, and you sign it. If you're comparing tools, how a tool handles a file that grows over time is a good question to add to the list of things I'd demand from any AI report writer.
Quick answers
Can I start an assessment report before I have all the documents? Yes. Upload what you have, then add files as they arrive. Each time, you approve only the new documents and return to the same report.
Do I have to re-approve documents I already approved? No. Documents you approved earlier are left untouched. You only review the new batch.
Will the draft include documents I add later? Yes. When you regenerate, the draft reads the new documents as well.
Can I add my own observations from testing day? Yes. You can add a note to the report in your own words, and the draft uses it.
Who decides what the report concludes? You do. Soma drafts and suggests. You review, edit and sign every section.
If you'd like to see this on a real case, bring one of your past reports, identifiers removed, and we'll show you the draft it produces.
Thank you for the work that happens between the intake and the signature. Most of it nobody sees, and it's the part that matters most.
— Ian
