Manage and Close a Care Plan

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe how to manage a care plan.
Update and add tasks to a care plan.
Track notes using interaction summaries.
Close a care plan.

Track Program and Benefit Participation

Case Manager Sandra and her team are actively working with program participant Jo on her new care plan at HNMI. Follow along to see how they track progress together.

If your care plan includes benefits, like Jo’s does, your participants are enrolled in programs and receive benefit disbursements.

Benefit disbursement records track when and how much of a benefit a participant received. Care plans connect participants with benefits through benefit assignment records, which are also related to the care plan record. When you create a benefit disbursement record, everything is connected so you get a full view of the services a participant receives.

If your nonprofit uses the Manage Benefit Disbursements element on care plans, track disbursements from the care plan record.

Creating benefit disbursements isn’t covered in this module. Learn about tracking disbursements in the Attendance and Benefit Tracking in Nonprofit Cloud for Programs module in the Resources section.

Update Status of Tasks

As Sandra, HNMI’s care manager, works through Jo’s care plan, she must update the status of tasks.

In the Healthy Cooking Skills care plan template, Program Manager Luke added a single template task in unit 2. And when Sandra created the care plan, an action plan record was created, along with a new task record. Task is a specific Salesforce object, and there are many ways to find and update the status of a task record. Here are two ways.

On a care plan record, click Quick Update and review all the tasks associated with a care plan. Further, review and update any task associated with the care plan. Use this same view to update the status of goals.
In the Activity panel of a care plan record, review all the associated tasks. To mark a task as complete, select the task name. Or click in that task’s row, and select Edit to change the status.

Learn more about managing tasks in Salesforce Help.

However you update the status of a task, that status is carried over everywhere it appears.

Add Tasks

Throughout a care plan, new needs come up and must be documented with tasks. And, as with changing the status of a task, there are a few ways to add tasks.

The most direct path is to click Edit Care Plan on a care plan record. This click opens the Edit Care Plan page, which follows the same steps as the Assign Care Plan Template flow in the last unit. On the third step in the flow, you can add tasks to any benefit, goal definition, or add new tasks. You can also use Edit Care Plan to add benefits and goal definitions as needed.

Record Interaction Summaries

As you work with program participants, it’s helpful to keep detailed notes of your interactions. Use the aptly named Interaction Summary object to track each session or discussion with a participant. Each interaction summary stores and relates notes to the participant’s care plan, case, and person account records to get a complete view of your work.

HNMI’s case manager Sandra is diligent about tracking each interaction with participants like Jo. It doesn’t only help her own tracking, but can also be used for additional reporting to funders later.

Sandra is back after a fruitful counseling session with Jo. So, she creates an interaction summary record to note the key discussion points of the session.

Interaction summaries can be related to many different types of records, such as accounts, person accounts, cases, and care plans. Use the Interaction Summaries component on the page to view interaction summaries in context of a record.

Plus, interaction summaries have built-in privacy. Sandra sets the Confidentiality Type value to Confidential on her interaction summary. At HNMI, this means that sharing the interaction summary is limited to only people Sandra selects—an important consideration for notes about program participants. Talk with your Salesforce admin about privacy settings for interaction summaries in your org.

Update the Status of Goals

As work on Jo’s care plan progresses, Sandra must update the status of goals. As with tasks, use these methods to update a goal’s status.

To update the status of an individual goal, find the goal assignment record in the Goal Assignment related list. Click the goal assignment record and edit it to change the value of the Status field, then save the record.
To update many goals at once, click Quick Update or Edit Care Plan on the care plan record, make your changes, and save them.

Close a Care Plan

After benefits are disbursed, tasks are completed, and goals are achieved, it’s time to close the care plan as a whole. On the care plan record, go to the Details tab, update the Status field to Completed, and save the record.

That’s what happens at HNMI, as program participant Jo completes her care plan, gains new skills, and improves her life. It’s a moment of short celebration for Case Manager Sandra and Program Manager Luke. Short, because there’s more work to do with other participants.

In this module, you explored how to set up and use a care plan. Like so much else in Salesforce, the options for customization are endless. Check out the documentation in the Resources section to learn more about case management and care plans in Nonprofit Cloud for Programs.

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