Use Word's AI Writing Tools to Polish OT Reports
For Occupational Therapists ·
What This Does
Word's Copilot AI can rewrite, expand, or restructure your OT report drafts to improve clarity, professional tone, and completeness. For evaluation reports, home modification assessments, and justification letters that you've already drafted in rough form, Copilot acts as an instant professional editor.
Before You Start
- You have Microsoft Word (desktop or online at office.com)
- Your organization has Microsoft 365 with Copilot enabled (Copilot in Word requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, or in some organizations the free M365 Copilot entitlement; ask IT if you don't see it)
- You have a rough draft you want to improve, even bullet points work
Steps
1. Open your document in Word
Open Word and either start a new document or open an existing evaluation report or letter draft. For a new document, you can type rough bullet points, you don't need a polished draft to start.
2. Find Copilot in Word
Click the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of the document window to open the Copilot side panel. Copilot is no longer on the Home ribbon; press F6 to reach the corner button by keyboard, or right-click it and choose Move to ribbon if you prefer the old placement. There is also an inline Copilot icon in the left margin for adding content mid-document.
3. Draft from bullets using Copilot
If you have rough notes, highlight them and choose Rewrite from the in-context Copilot options. Or in the Copilot panel, type:
"I have bullet point evaluation notes. Write these up as a professional OT evaluation narrative in the Assessment section format. The reader is an insurance reviewer. Use clinical but accessible language."
Then paste your bullet notes into the prompt box.
4. Improve an existing section
Highlight a paragraph that feels clunky, choose Rewrite, and pick the version you like, or describe the change you want ("more formal," "more concise"). For justification letters, ask Copilot in the chat pane: "Rewrite this section to be more persuasive for an insurance medical necessity review."
Real Example
Scenario: You've drafted a rough home modification report after a home visit but the narrative section is clunky and doesn't flow well. You have 10 minutes before your next patient.
What you do: Highlight the narrative section → Copilot → Rewrite → "Rewrite this to sound more professional and organized, grouping recommendations by room. Keep all the specific recommendations."
What you get: A polished, professionally structured paragraph that would have taken 20 minutes to rewrite yourself, done in under a minute.
Tips
- Word Copilot works best on text that already contains the right clinical facts. It improves structure and tone, not clinical accuracy
- Use the Track Changes view after Copilot rewrites. This lets you see exactly what changed and accept or reject individual edits
- If you write most of your reports in your EMR rather than Word, try drafting the report section first in Word using Copilot, then copy-paste the polished text into your EMR's narrative fields
Tool interfaces change, if a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.