What are process notes?
Process notes — also called psychotherapy notes — are a therapist’s private notes about a session, kept separate from the official record and given special protection under HIPAA. They’re where you think, not what you file.
Process notes vs. progress notes
The two are easy to confuse but serve different purposes:
- Progress notes are the official clinical record — the dates, interventions, and details needed for treatment continuity and billing. They belong in the chart.
- Process notes (psychotherapy notes) are your private reflections to support your own clinical thinking — hypotheses, countertransference, the texture of the work. They’re meant to be kept separate from the chart.
Are process notes protected under HIPAA?
Yes — HIPAA singles out “psychotherapy notes” for extra protection. They generally require a separate, specific client authorization to disclose, and they’re excluded from the client’s general right of access to their record. But there’s a catch: they only keep that protected status if you keep them separate from the rest of the record. Mixed into the chart, they lose it.
Can process notes be subpoenaed?
They carry more legal protection than ordinary records, but the protection isn’t absolute. The more immediate, everyday exposure is technical: most cloud practice software can read your notes and could be compelled to produce them. That’s why the strongest practical safeguard is keeping process notes separate and end-to-end encrypted, so your software vendor never holds a readable copy.
How ShrinkNotes keeps process notes private
ShrinkNotes is built around exactly this distinction. Your Private Process Notes are end-to-end encrypted in your browser — we never hold the key and can’t read them — and they live separate from your Official Chart Notes, which stay minimal and legal. It’s the note structure the profession expects, enforced by architecture.
Learn more about how the encryption works, or why it makes your notes resistant to a subpoena served on your software vendor.