Hi Jack,
See writing to the board will pay great dividents. We have all of our forms (so far eight) for demographics, registration, etc. on our site, and we can send them via email for new patients.
We use jotform.com and, while the learning curve is a bit to the moderate end, it is considered the number one form maker in the world. And, it isn't really that pricey. The actual form is simple as it pretty much owns the patent on drag and drop for form making. The tougher part is the editing, easy but for one thing.
The forms, while you can see them directly from your browser are actually in jotform's cloud so always safe there. Support is mostly excellent, they sometimes have difficulty knowing what you did, but they can pull up the form and see how you screwed up or fix it for you. They use email and chat. They didn't use chat six months ago but someone complained a lot (hmmm....wonder who that could be) and they have instituted chat, which is much better.
You have several options, but we simply have them click them on the site or email them to them. They click the link which brings up the form from jotform.com. It's all behind the scenes so they just see the form. They fill it out, and hit submit, and it goes directly to your email or anywhere you wish. You can print the pdf or save it, and it makes beautiful pdf printouts.
It really is a straightforward and excellent process. I can send an exact form for you to fill out and submit, and it will come back to me, then I can send you the finished product. The nice thing to is you can choose what email or emails to come back to so your receptionist can put the demographics into the computer.
