OBJECTIVES: The ultimate goals in managing Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) are preventing or controlling joint damage, preventing loss of function and decreasing pain. Assessment of disease activity is critical; therefore, guidelines recommend that physicians evaluate patients’ symptoms and severity. The objective of this study was to examine how often evaluation of disease activity and damage in patients with RA was documented by physicians during office visits. METHODS: We extracted 300 records for RA patients from a unique database of physician-patient interactions (RealHealthData). Using Atlas.ti, we analyzed these records to evaluate how often the recommended assessments of disease activity was documented by physicians during office visits. RESULTS: Almost all physicians (92%) document the presence of actively inflamed joints (i.e., tender and swollen joint counts) and evidence of disease progression (i.e., loss of motion, deformity). However, only 28% and 18% document duration of morning stiffness and fatigue respectively. And while limitation of function is explored, only 11% documented the degree of joint pain via a visual analog scale. Lastly, it was rare for physicians to document their own global assessment of disease activity (5%) or the patient’s global assessment of disease activity (8%). CONCLUSIONS: The more we know about patients’ reported symptoms and outcomes, the more we can actively plan and organize research, development and outreach that is patient-centric and clinically meaningful. Successful treatment includes systematic and regular evaluation of disease activity and patient assessments to help limit joint damage and functional loss. While many physicians are documenting the number of tender and swollen joints, loss of motion or deformity, a majority of physicians are not documenting patient-reported symptoms that are critical to disease monitoring such as morning stiffness, fatigue or overall degree of joint pain.  Our results demonstrate there is room for improvement when it comes to documenting patient-reported outcomes in RA.