Draft privately, publish deliberately
Edits stay in a draft. When something the patient would read changes, a banner tells you they're still seeing the last version until you click Publish. Ticking a step doesn't trigger it; real content changes do.
Care Plans
Patient care plans with goals, steps and versions you publish
Ona care plans are patient-facing plans of care built into the EHR: health concerns, measurable goals, ordered recommendations and a checklist of steps the patient ticks off in the portal. You edit a private draft and publish when it's ready, and every published version is kept with the exact PDF the patient received.
- Draft, then publish
- Goals with targets & reviews
- Patient steps in the portal
- Every version kept as a PDF
Ona care plans are the patient-facing plan of care inside Ona, the AI-native practice management platform. A plan sets out what you're treating, what you're aiming for, what the patient should do and the steps to tick off before the next visit. It's written for the patient, published to their portal and kept as a versioned PDF.
It's built for practices that manage patients between visits: primary care and direct primary care running chronic-disease programs, behavioral health setting treatment goals, functional medicine protocols and post-operative recovery. Care plans are also the foundation of chronic care management, because Care Time is logged against the patient's active plan.
01 · Why it matters
The note says what happened. The plan says what happens next.
Much of what decides a chronic patient's outcome happens between visits: the walking, the home blood-pressure log, the medication taken every morning. Yet the plan usually lives in the last paragraph of a clinical note the patient never reads, or on a printout that's out of date by the next appointment.
A care plan in Ona is written to be read by the patient. It sits in their portal in plain language, with steps they can tick off, and it changes only when you decide to publish a new version.
02 · What you get
A plan you control, in words the patient can follow.
Goals you can measure
Each goal has a baseline, a target, a short or long term, a target date and a next review date, with a status of Not started, In progress, Achieved, Not achieved or On hold.
Steps the patient ticks off
Patient steps show in the portal as a checklist. When the patient ticks one, your side shows it as ticked by the patient. Steps reach the patient straight away; they don't wait for a publish.
Every version kept
Each published version is frozen with its content and the exact PDF the patient received, so you can show what they were told months later. A PDF of unpublished edits is stamped as a working copy.
Templates and starter protocols
Build a template once and apply it to any patient; its dates are offsets from the plan's start. Four starter protocols ship to import and adapt: hypertension, type 2 diabetes, weight management and post-operative recovery.
Plain language for patients
The portal shows Your steps, What we're working towards and What to do. A goal marked Not achieved reads as “Still working on it.” Internal notes and CCM enrollment never reach the patient.
03 · How it works
From a template to the plan the patient follows.
Turn on Care Plans
An owner or admin turns on Care Plans under Settings → Care Plans. Every chart gets a Care Plans tab, and Library gains Care Plans for your templates and the starter protocols.Start from a template or a blank plan
On the patient's Care Plans tab, choose New plan, then From template or Blank plan. Applying a template copies it into a draft, so later template edits never change this plan.Write it for this patient
Add the summary, the health concerns (an ICD-10 diagnosis or plain language), goals with targets and review dates, recommendations in the order the patient should read them, and photos or videos from the chart.Activate
Activate makes the plan live and publishes version 1 to the patient's portal. A patient has one active plan at a time, so any earlier active plan is superseded.Publish changes, track progress
Update goal statuses as the patient progresses and publish when the patient-facing content changes. When the plan ends, deactivate it with a reason, or clone it into a fresh draft.
04 · In practice
What this looks like on a real day.
Primary care
A hypertension plan in a few minutes.
Import the hypertension starter protocol, apply it to the patient, replace the placeholder targets with their real blood-pressure goal and review date, and activate. The patient opens a plan with three things to do and two steps to tick.
Chronic care program
The plan that CCM runs on.
With chronic care management on, the active care plan is what the patient is enrolled against. Staff log care time to it through the month, and the month closes into draft CCM claims.
Behavioral health
Treatment goals the client can see.
Short- and long-term goals with plain-language status keep the work visible between sessions, and every change the client sees is a published version you can produce later.
Post-operative care
Recovery instructions that stay current.
The post-operative starter covers activity restrictions, wound care and when to seek urgent help. Write in your own instructions, attach a wound photo from the chart, and publish an update after each check.
FAQ
Common questions about care plans.
What is a patient care plan?
A care plan is a forward-looking plan of care: the health concerns being treated, the goals, the recommendations and the steps the patient should take before the next visit. In Ona it's written for the patient and published to their portal, rather than buried in a clinical note.
Do patients see my draft edits?
No. Patients only ever see the last published version. The exception is patient steps, which reach the patient as soon as you add them.
Can a patient have more than one care plan?
A patient has one active plan at a time. Activating a new plan supersedes the old one automatically, and the old plan stays in the patient's history.
Does editing a care plan template change plans already in use?
No. Applying a template copies it into the patient's plan, so template edits only affect plans you create afterwards. Deactivate a template to stop it being applied while the plans built from it stay readable.
Can I attach documents to a care plan?
You can attach photos and videos that are on the patient's chart, or upload new ones to the chart and attach them. PDFs and other documents can't be attached to a care plan today.
Can patients download their care plan as a PDF?
Yes. Patients download the published plan as a PDF from the portal, and your team can download any published version from the plan's Versions list.
How do care plans relate to chronic care management?
CCM enrollment and care time are tied to the patient's active care plan. Turn on Track care-management time under Settings → Care Plans to log minutes against the plan and close them into CCM claims each month.
Ready when you are
Give patients a plan they'll follow.
Book a demo and we'll build a care plan from one of the starter protocols together.