Every coaching session ends with a note. On a full caseload, those notes add up to hours each week, and plenty get written at night. Most of that time goes two ways: writing what doesn't need writing, and hunting for what's already been written.
Here's what we'd put in a coaching note, what we'd leave out, where privacy law comes in, and whether AI is ready to help.
Why notes eat a coaching team's week
We couldn't find a study that measures how long health coaches spend on notes. The closest data comes from physicians, and it's sobering. A study of 142 family physicians, Arndt et al. (Annals of Family Medicine, 2017), found they spent 5.9 hours of an 11.4-hour workday in the electronic health record, 1.4 hours of it after clinic closed. Clerical work, documentation included, took up almost half of that time.
Coaches don't write physician notes, and nobody should read those numbers as theirs. But the shape is familiar. Coaching is a lot of short contacts, plus messages between sessions, and each one wants a line somewhere. When a team doesn't agree on what that line should say, every coach writes their own version, and the long version always wins.
What goes in health coaching notes
A good note lets a colleague pick up the member tomorrow without a phone call, and lets you start the next session without rereading three old ones. We'd keep it to five things.
Our own habit is to say the last two out loud before the session closes: "So this week you're going to…" The member hears their commitment, and the note is half written before you hang up.
What to leave out of a coaching note
The fastest way to shorten a note is to stop writing things that don't belong in it.
Leave out the transcript. A blow-by-blow of the conversation takes the longest to write and is the least useful thing to read later. Leave out interpretation that sounds like a diagnosis. "Seems depressed" isn't a coach's call; "said she's been sleeping badly and feeling low for a month, referred to her doctor" is. And leave out details about other people in the member's life unless they bear on the plan.
When HIPAA applies to coaching notes
HIPAA covers health plans, most health care providers, and the businesses that handle health information on their behalf. If your coaching program runs for a health plan, a health system or a clinic, it's very likely your notes are covered.
That brings a right most coaches don't think about. Under federal privacy rules, a member can inspect and get a copy of health information in their record, including a health plan's case management records. There's an exception for psychotherapy notes, but the rules define those as notes by a mental health professional, kept apart from the main record. A health coach's session note doesn't fit that description.
If your program sits outside health care, say a coaching company working directly with employers, HIPAA may not technically apply. The national coaching board still says coaches should handle client records by HIPAA's standards, whatever their setting. We agree, and so will most of your buyers. If you're vetting tools, our guide to a HIPAA-compliant coaching platform covers what to check.
One common surprise: HIPAA doesn't say how long to keep notes. HHS leaves record retention to state law, and requires records to be protected for as long as they're kept, through disposal. Your contracts may set their own period.
Can AI write your coaching notes?
It's the obvious question, and there's now a randomized trial on it, though in physicians, not coaches. UCLA tested two AI scribes with 238 physicians across about 72,000 patient visits, published in NEJM AI in 2025. Doctors using one tool cut their time per note from about four and a half minutes to just under four, a reduction 9.5% larger than the control group's. The second tool's drop wasn't statistically significant. Physicians also reported that the AI notes occasionally had clinically significant errors, mostly things left out.
Here's our read. AI can shave time off a note, but less than the marketing suggests, and someone still has to check every one. For coaching, the bigger issue is consent. An AI scribe records the session. State AI laws are starting to set rules on that. Illinois, for one, requires a licensed professional to get written consent before using AI on a recorded or transcribed session. If you try a scribe, tell members, get their consent in writing, and keep a coach reading every note before it's saved.
Notes are a system problem, not a discipline problem
When notes run long or late, the usual fix is a reminder to the team. That rarely works on its own, because a lot of the time isn't lost in the writing. It's lost in finding things: the last note in one tool, the member's messages in another, their progress somewhere else.
What used to take 10 browser tabs is now one unified dashboard. Our team is happier and more productive.
Coaching Program Manager, Nonprofit Health Organization
That's the idea behind how notes work in Avidon. Each member's notes live in their own account, so a coach can look the member up and read past notes while they're coaching them.
Agree on the five things a note holds, and keep the note next to everything else about the member. If you're weighing tools with that in mind, compare coaching platforms on how many places a coach has to look before a session. For a coaching company running a full caseload, that number decides whether notes get written at 3 p.m. or 9 p.m.
