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Short answer: an app to keep track of patient interactions is one shared timeline per patient: every call, visit, message, referral and document, stamped with who did it and when, with the next follow-up owned by a named person and a reminder that fires on its own. It needs a login for everyone who touches the patient (staff, outside providers, referral partners and the patient), rules on the server so each of them sees only their slice, and an audit trail you can show a reviewer. A spreadsheet or a shared inbox covers the first week and then loses the follow-up that mattered. This guide covers what the app has to do, the data model behind it, and how to build one on Tadabase AI from the Patient Case Management & Care Navigation template, including what changes when the data is protected health information.
Describe your case management app — we’ll build it now.
We started the prompt for you. Edit it, or describe your own app.
What counts as a patient interaction #
Anything that changes what should happen next for a patient. In a care-navigation or care-coordination team that usually means:
- Calls and messages: a welcome call, a check-in, a voicemail left, a reminder sent.
- Visits and meetings: a home visit, an appointment kept or missed, a care-team huddle about the patient.
- Referrals: sent to a provider or agency, accepted, declined, completed, with the outcome recorded.
- Documents: an intake form, records received, a letter shared back with the patient.
- Consents: signed, expiring, revoked. They decide what may be shared with whom.
- Escalations: a case past its target date, a follow-up that slipped, a note flagged for a supervisor.
The test of a good tracker is simple: when a patient calls, can whoever answers see the whole story in one place, and is the next step already on somebody's list?
What the app has to do #
| Job | Why it matters | How the template does it |
|---|---|---|
| One timeline per patient and case | The next person picks up without re-asking the patient | Notes, tasks, referrals and documents all connect to the case and the patient |
| Every entry stamped | You can tell who said what, and when | A workflow stamps each new note with its author, time and case navigator |
| Follow-ups with an owner and a date | Interactions without a next step are how patients get lost | Tasks carry an owner and a due date; a daily workflow emails the owner the day before and flags anything overdue |
| Escalation | A stalled case should reach a supervisor before it reaches a complaint | Cases past their target close date escalate to the supervisor, then to the org admin after three more days |
| Handoffs | Staff change; the patient's history must not | Reassigning a case moves its open tasks, notes, documents and referrals to the new navigator |
| Consent before sharing | A referral or document sent without consent is a disclosure problem | Referrals and document shares are held until an active consent is on file; revoking a consent withdraws shared documents |
| A view for people outside the team | Faxes and phone tag are interactions nobody logs | Provider, referral-partner and patient portals, each scoped to its own records |
| An audit trail | Reviewers ask who looked at and changed a record | An append-only audit log of case changes and exports, with login logging ready to switch on |
Spreadsheet, shared inbox, or a purpose-built app #
Each has its place. The honest comparison:
| Spreadsheet | Shared inbox or phone log | Purpose-built tracker | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Right when | One person, a short list, nothing sensitive | Interactions are mostly inbound messages | A team shares a caseload and outside people are involved |
| Follow-ups | Whatever someone remembers to filter for | Flags and stars, per person | Owned tasks with due dates, reminders and escalation |
| Who can see what | Everyone with the file sees everything | Everyone with the inbox sees everything | Roles and record rules: a navigator sees their caseload, a partner sees their referrals |
| History | Overwritten cells | Scattered across threads | One timeline per case, with an audit log |
| Patients and partners | No access, or the whole sheet | Email back and forth | Their own portal login, scoped to their own records |
| Protected health information | Not appropriate | Only with a BAA for the mail service, and no per-record access control | On a platform that signs a BAA and enforces access and logging on the server |
The data model behind a patient interaction tracker #
The Patient Case Management & Care Navigation template uses twelve tables. The ones that carry the interactions:
- Patients: demographics, contact details, language, and the portal login that lets each patient follow their own case.
- Cases: the heart of the app. Program, priority, assigned navigator, supervisor and target close date.
- Notes: the running narrative. Call summaries, visit notes and escalation flags, tied to the patient and the case.
- Tasks: the follow-ups. Welcome calls, check-ins and paperwork, each with an owner and a due date.
- Referrals: in and out of your organisation, tracked from submission to outcome.
- Documents: files attached to a case, uploaded by staff or by the patient from the portal.
- Consents: signed consents and their expiry dates, the gate for sharing and referring.
- Audit Log: who changed what and when, readable by admins and never edited by hand.
The rest (Organizations, Care Programs, Providers, Referral Partners) are the directory the interactions point at. Keep interactions as their own records connected to the case, never as a growing text field on the patient: separate records can be filtered, assigned, audited and scoped by role.
Build it on Tadabase AI from the template #
Copy the template at tadabase.com/templates/patient-case-management-care-navigation. It installs with:
- 7 roles: Admin, Supervisor, Navigator, Provider, Patient, Referral Partner, and a login-free Partner Intake link that returns only a reference number.
- 12 tables with row-level security on every one.
- 18 workflows: case intake, reassignment, task reminders and overdue flags, the escalation ladder, consent gates on referrals and documents, consent expiry warnings, partner intake and audit entries.
- 16 email templates for case, task, referral, consent and escalation notices. The provider's new-referral email deliberately leaves clinical detail out.
- 8 AI agents, including Intake Triage, Stalled Case Monitor, Case Summary & Handoff and a Patient Message Drafter.
- Optional sample data: demo users for every role and seeded patients, cases and referrals.
Then make it yours in an afternoon:
- Rename the care programs and set the checklist of tasks each new case starts with.
- Add the fields your team actually records on a note or a case. Describe the change in plain words and the builder makes it, or edit the table yourself.
- Set the reminder and escalation timing to your own standard of care.
- Invite your navigators and supervisor, then your providers and referral partners. App users are unlimited on every plan.
- Turn on the patient portal when you are ready for patients to see their own case and upload documents.
If your interactions start at the front desk rather than in a caseload, the Patient Intake & Scheduling template (tadabase.com/templates/patient-intake-scheduling) covers the daily schedule, intake forms, insurance, consents, a waitlist and appointment reminders instead.
When the interactions are protected health information #
A log of calls, visits and referrals about identifiable patients is PHI. You need a vendor that signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and enforces the safeguards in the backend. Tadabase AI is HIPAA-eligible: on HIPAA-eligible plans we sign a BAA and run your app on BAA-covered AWS infrastructure. For this kind of app that means:
- HIPAA is a switch on the app, including one you have already built from the template. You flag which tables and fields hold PHI.
- Row-level security is enforced on the server, so the rule that limits a navigator to their caseload also covers the API and the React front end.
- A PHI access log records reads and changes of PHI with the user, the action, the table and record, the source IP and the result. Values are never written to the log.
- HIPAA setup applies automatic logoff, two-factor authentication for end users and a password policy.
- The in-app agent works on stand-ins: on a HIPAA app it sees consistent pseudonyms in place of real PHI, and its reads are logged separately from a person's.
- A publish gate checks the app before every publish (PHI tables flagged, deny-by-default row-level security on them, secure file fields, access logging on, BAA-covered hosting) and will not publish a configuration that fails.
Common questions #
Why not just use the notes in our EHR? If every interaction happens inside one clinic and every person involved has an EHR login, do. A separate tracker earns its place when the work spans non-clinical staff, community providers, referral partners and the patient, or when you need follow-up rules the EHR does not let you set.
Can patients see their own interactions? In the template, the Patient role has a read-only view of their own case status and timeline plus the documents shared with them, and can upload documents. Documents are shared back only once an active consent is on file.
Can outside providers log outcomes? Yes. The Provider portal shows only the referrals sent to that provider and lets them record a status and outcome notes, with no access to cases, patients, notes or documents.
Can an admin quietly change the record? Not in the template: the Admin role cannot edit or delete notes or audit entries, and every change to a case writes an audit entry. Change those rules only on purpose.
How do I move my existing spreadsheet in? Add an import for patients and open cases (the template ships without one), bring those in first, then start logging new interactions in the app. Historical notes can follow as records connected to each case.
Does it cost extra per staff member or partner? No. App users are unlimited on every Tadabase AI plan. PHI requires a HIPAA-eligible plan.
Where to start #
Write down the five interactions your team logs most, who owns the next step after each, and who outside the team needs to see the result. Then copy the Patient Case Management & Care Navigation template, rename the programs, and log a week of real interactions with sample data before inviting partners and patients. If the data is PHI, turn HIPAA on and clear the publish gate before the first real patient goes in.