Getting started: setting up your loved one's care

Getting started is the first line of the menu, above Dashboard, for the account owner and caregiver-role accounts. It is never shown to family or friends, to the care team or professionals, or on the patient's own key (the number pad or the patient's own email), and it never appears on Communicate.

The first time the owner of a new account signs in, they choose. Start talking now asks four short questions, one per screen: the patient's name and what they like to be called; where the patient is right now (at home, in a hospital, in rehab, in a nursing home, in assisted living, in a hospice house, or away from home for treatment, with the place and room); the language, the voice and what makes talking hard (the condition mode); and, if you like, one emergency contact (Skip for now is always there). Then it goes straight to Communicate. Set up the patient's care is six steps: who's setting this up; the same four basics; what the patient needs; the parts of the plan your answers made required; the invitations your answers suggested; and review and finish. Just look around first goes to the Dashboard.

What the patient needs starts with What would you like help with? (talking, care at home, doctors, nurses and therapists, medicines, money, bills and papers, family and friends, finding and paying professionals, or not sure yet) and then asks only the questions that go with what you picked, such as who helps at home today, what help is needed during the day, who is caring for the patient's health, medicines, money, who can speak for the patient with doctors, shopping, getting to appointments, family and friends, and who pays for care in the home (optional). Under every answer, This answer says exactly what it did: the menu groups it opens first, the plan sections it adds, and any invitation it suggests.

Every answer is saved the moment you choose it, on the plan's own record, so anyone on the account can stop and pick up where they left off on any device. Where is the patient right now is saved where Visit Planning keeps it, together with the care setting on the Care Team page, so the two always agree. The menu line shows progress, for example Getting started · 3 of 6.

The plan step lists the sections your answers made required: always 1 Patient Profile, 19 Emergency and Escalation Plan and 22 Administrative File, plus what the answers add (for example care at home adds the weekly coverage, the daily routine, the team roster, the role rules and the service interruption plan; medicines adds the medication plan). Each opens the page where it lives, with Back to Getting started at the top. A section is ready when that page has something in it and you tick This is right for now. A section the app has no place for yet is listed but never holds up the step. The rest are under Can wait.

When everything is done, the menu line becomes the patient's plan, for example Debbie's plan: a short summary of the sections needed now, the pages your answers put first, your answers with Change, and a link to the full Home Care Team Plan. Nothing in the menu is ever hidden: answers only decide which groups open first on a device where you have not opened or closed them yourself, and Show everything opens every group.

Reminders stay in the app: the menu line and one card on the Dashboard, Set up the patient's care when you're ready, with Continue and Not now. Not now hides the card for 7 days; after the third time only the menu line remains. There are no emails about it.

Accounts that already existed are never sent through setup. Their menu shows the patient's plan with Review; it opens Review what we found, the app's best answers read from what is already in the app (for example Medicines: yes, 12 on Prescriptions), each with Looks right or Change, then the plan sections that already have something in them, one at a time, with where each was found and Looks right, Fix it or Not now. Confirming changes nothing in the patient's records; it is only noted on the plan. Done reviewing, or Not now, take Review off the menu.