A clinic director in Upper Michigan wakes up to another snow day. The university is closed, students are scrambling, and a room full of clients need to know their morning sessions are off. A few years ago, that meant a patchwork of phone calls, emails, and hoping the message landed. Today it takes one mass message before she's had her coffee. That shift, from scrambling to one click, is a small piece of a much bigger change at Northern Michigan University.
The Challenge
Northern Michigan University has run a speech clinic for decades, staffed by undergraduate students providing therapy under supervision. When Diane Jandron was hired in 2019 as the clinic's only supervisor, the program was reapplying for accreditation to bring back its graduate program. Then COVID hit, the application was pulled, and the clinic had to move everything online almost overnight.
"Historically, everything was on paper," Diane recalls. "And we were using a paper system when COVID came. Then out of not knowing what else to do, we ended up with Google Docs. Just creating accounts there."
It worked, barely. But it never felt right.
"We weren't really happy with that," she says. "I never felt like it was a good, solid, secure system."
The bigger strain came at the start of every term. "There was always this whole issue at the beginning of every semester, any clinic director can tell you, is the scheduling aspect of running the clinic," Diane explains. "Trying to do that in Google Docs, and on paper. It was really time consuming and just didn't feel organized."
There was also the matter of teaching. Diane's students rotate through for a single semester, and many have never written a clinical note in their lives. She needed a way to give feedback, track edits, and sign off on documentation without spending weeks training students on software they'd only use for a few months.
Finding ClinicNote
The search started as a shared project. Diane's applied behavior analysis colleagues were also weighing documentation options, so the two groups went looking together, reviewing programs and meeting with vendors.
ClinicNote stood out almost immediately, and for Diane it came down to teaching.
"A big thing was it was easy to teach to the students," she says. "You don't want to spend a lot of time, especially if you have students for just one semester. You don't want to spend weeks on training how to use an EMR system."
The feedback tools sealed it. Diane wanted students to learn to edit their own notes before she signed off, and ClinicNote let her do exactly that.
"ClinicNote was amazing with the ability to make comments on the side (of the document), to highlight any specific concerns, and then to be able to send the document back to the student. They make changes, resubmit it, and I can send it back to them with more comments if needed," she says. "And the other thing I liked is that the students could just ask questions through the EMR, too. Like, hey, my client did this, and I'm not sure how to say that. So I could help them with wording, answer that question, and then the student could put suggestions into their note."
For a supervisor whose real product is not just documentation but learning, that mattered. "It's a great learning process for students on how to write a note. And that's a huge part in the educational system, to be able to give that feedback to students. I don't know how any system could be more functional."
Implementation and Onboarding
The clinic took a measured approach. Training included Diane, the administrative assistant, and another faculty member, and the team practiced before any student touched the system.
"We were able to have test scenarios, test clients in the system, and then to be able to practice it and implement it before we were able to bring students on board," Diane says.
Rather than migrate years of paper records, they drew a clean line. "We decided to start it at the beginning of a semester, and then all the clients that we had at that time were the ones that we started in the system. The old ones that we were no longer seeing, we just kept them on paper."
That choice kept the transition simple, and it stuck. "Right now, we're obviously 100 percent in the EMR."
The Results
The clinic is in the middle of a growth spurt. Diane started with about 12 clients; today there are roughly 30 active, another 25 on the waiting list, two new faculty specializing in AAC and feeding, and a graduate program restarting after more than two decades. ClinicNote is the system holding it all together.
A real feedback loop for student clinicians. Comments, highlights, and back-and-forth edits live right inside the note, so students learn to revise their own work before a supervisor signs off. "It was very easy to give them feedback, for them to ask questions, to see the progress they've made, and then to sign off on the note and have it complete," Diane says.
Scheduling that students can navigate themselves. Where the start of every semester used to mean wrestling with spreadsheets, students can now check Diane's calendar and request time directly. "If they want an appointment with me, they can go on and look at my schedule and ask, hey, I see you have noon, can I meet you at that time?"
Snow-day messaging in one click. Up in Upper Michigan, closures are routine. "In the morning I can wake up, Northern's closed, and I can send out a mass message through the portal," Diane says. "That works out really well."
Records that follow the client. Families and adult clients can pull up live notes for outside appointments. "If the parent is having a meeting with the speech path, they can pull up our notes and see them live so that other people know what we're doing," she says. "If somebody has a doctor's appointment, they have access to all of our notes and records right there at their fingertips."
Confidential communication that stays organized. HIPAA-compliant portal messaging keeps conversations with clients and parents in one place, and a newer setting lets Diane control exactly who sees each thread. "There's really no reason for the secretaries to be seeing all of the exchanges we have going back and forth," she says, "but they do need access. Like if I broke my leg and couldn't come in, they should be able to send out messages to the customers."
Forms built around how she teaches. Diane started with custom SOAP note forms so undergraduates would learn to think through a note the traditional way. With the graduate program returning, she revisited ClinicNote's built-in forms and was won over. "I'm finding that I do like them."
Looking Ahead
When Diane has gone looking for a missing feature, she's often found it was already there. That happened the day of our conversation, when she discovered she could control who receives each message thread. "Sometimes I think there needs to be a new feature, and then I find that if I dig into the system more, they already have it."
She's candid about what she'd still like to see. Text messaging tops the list, born from years of watching busy parents check their phones but not their email. "When people are trying to get out the door for work or school, they're not checking their email, but they're always checking their phone." She'd also like to see more speech diagnosis codes added to the forms, something she ran into with a voice client.
What keeps her loyal is the support. After accidentally locking herself out while testing IP restrictions one weekend, she had an answer fast. "Within 10, 15 minutes, support answered and got me right back in," she says. "Their support is really fast. Any questions you have, they're very pleasant to work with and very prompt on getting back to you."
These days Diane does the recommending herself. "I'm part of the Midwest clinic directors group, and I'm a cheerleader for ClinicNote," she says. "There's a few schools that have jumped on board from our group."
About Northern Michigan University Speech Clinic
The Northern Michigan University Speech Clinic, in Marquette, Michigan, provides speech and language therapy to children and adults at no cost to clients. Staffed by undergraduate student clinicians under faculty supervision, the clinic is relaunching its graduate program in 2026 and expanding its specialties to include AAC, feeding, and neurological care.
"I don't know how any system could be more functional. And that's a huge part in the educational system, to be able to give that feedback to students."
— Diane Jandron, Clinical Supervisor, Northern Michigan University Speech Clinic