Cat Ridout is a solo osteopath who runs a movement-based practice from the front of her home in Victoria, Australia. She has no receptionist, no waiting room, and a background in market research that makes her unusually particular about how things feel for the patient. Her forms are Finger-Ink. Her patients have noticed.
Cat Ridout runs True Health Osteopathy from the front of her home. There is no waiting room. Patients park on the street nearby and text her when they arrive. She sees 28 or more patients a week across four days, treats them while they're moving — a style of osteopathy built around functional movement — and handles every piece of administration herself.
Every decision in the clinic gets filtered through one question: what would I want if I were the patient? That includes the forms.
“I pretty much have designed everything in the clinic based off of what I would like if I was a patient,” Cat says. “Because I remember what it's like.”
That design-thinking mindset is what brought her to Finger-Ink — and it is what has kept her there through five years, a change of patient management system, and a live evaluation of a competitor's alternative.
Cat started with Cliniko's native forms. They worked, technically. But they were long, lacked conditional logic, and asked patients questions that had nothing to do with them. If someone ticked “no” to a condition, the follow-up questions for that condition still appeared.
“It confuses people when they don't understand why they're getting a question,” Cat says. “And these forms would annoy me. I wouldn't want to fill them out, to be honest.”
Cat has a background in market research, which gives her an unusually sharp eye for how forms feel to fill out. Cliniko's native forms felt functional but impersonal — closer to admin than experience. She wanted something with conditional logic, something better designed, and something that felt like it belonged in the clinic she was building.
She found it in the Cliniko integrations directory, specifically searching for a forms tool that could do if-this-then-that branching. Finger-Ink could. It also looked the way she wanted her clinic to feel.
“You know how the other forms are ugly? Finger-Ink's, like, better and easier. It's got the if-this-then-that in there. And patients will compliment you on it.”
- Cat Ridout, Owner & Osteopath, True Health Osteopathy
Setup was straightforward. Connecting to Cliniko was simple, and any question she couldn't figure out, Brendan at Finger-Ink handled directly. When she had a PDF she wanted turned into a digital form, she sent it over and he built it for her.
“I'm a big, like, if I use technology stuff, I'm big on giving feedback,” Cat says. “I want to help because it just makes my life better. And once I like it, I'm like, I'll always use it.”
New patients receive a Finger-Ink link the moment they book. The link goes out via Peptalkr (her patient messaging tool) as a text message and again via email with their booking confirmation. They get another reminder four days before the appointment, and a final one an hour before.
Most patients complete the form at home before they arrive. The conditional logic means they only see questions relevant to them — someone who ticks “no” to a medical condition never sees the follow-up questions for it. A form that might print to two or three pages on paper feels, on a phone, like a handful of taps.
For the rare patient who arrives without completing the form, Cat handles it in person. But that is the exception, not the rule.
Cat did not set out to build a form that patients would comment on. She set out to build one that wouldn't annoy them. The compliments came as a surprise.
“I get complimented on the forms,” she says. “Yesterday, one of my friends' boyfriends was coming to get treated, and he said, I meant to say to you last week that your forms were awesome. They were so good-looking and they were easy to use.”
“It's a weird thing to get a compliment on, but it is something I do get complimented on.”
- Cat Ridout, Owner & Osteopath, True Health Osteopathy
It's a small moment at the end of a five-minute task. But for a practitioner who designs everything around the patient's experience, it matters. The forms aren't just collecting information. They're carrying the clinic's feel into the patient's hands before they walk through the door.
Cat has not defaulted to Finger-Ink. She has actively chosen it, repeatedly, over live alternatives.
During COVID, she used CliniqApps for mobile check-in. Their forms were better than Cliniko's native offering, but the overall experience was confusing and she was paying for features she wasn't using. She cancelled.
She later switched from Cliniko to Halaxy as her patient management system. The move meant losing Finger-Ink, which only integrates with Cliniko and Nookal. When she returned to Cliniko, Finger-Ink was one of the first things she set back up.
More recently, she evaluated the built-in form offered by Peptalkr, a patient messaging tool she already pays for. She could have consolidated. She chose not to.
“I'd rather still stick with Finger-Ink because I like the flow of it,” Cat says. “And just the look of it feels more modern.”
Cat knows Finger-Ink can embed video into forms — she has seen the feature but hasn't yet taken the time to set it up. It's on her list. Beyond that, the tool does what she needs it to do: forms that feel right for the patient, sync reliably to Cliniko, and carry her clinic's attention to detail into a moment most practices treat as admin.
“Customer service has always been top tier,” she says. “And I do appreciate everything.”
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