Reviewing and approving progress notes as a team leader

How to work through submitted notes: approve and lock clean notes, return notes that need more detail, and escalate notes that describe an incident.

Before you begin

• Your role can approve progress notes (team leaders and registered nurses can by default).
• Notes have been submitted in your houses or teams.

Open the review queue

1. Go to Care → Progress notes. The page title shows how many notes are waiting, for example 12 notes waiting for review.
2. Open the Review queue tab. Notes are grouped by House; switch Group by to Team or Participant if that suits you better.
3. Use the house picker (All houses) to narrow the list, and the flag chips (Possible incident, Health concern, Missing goal, Short) to see flagged notes first.

Approve a note

1. Read the note on its card. Select Open note to see the full note, the Template checks, Goals worked on, photos and history.
2. Select Approve and lock. The note is approved, locked to the record and attributed to you.
3. To clear several clean notes at once, select Approve unflagged on a group, or Approve N unflagged in the toolbar. Flagged and restricted notes are left for you to open one at a time.

Return a note for changes

1. Select Return with comment on the card (or on the note page).
2. Pick one or more reasons: Tag the goal, More detail on the response, Record the health concern, Possible incident or Other.
3. Write a Comment for the worker of at least 5 characters, then select Return to (the button shows the worker’s first name).
4. The support worker is notified with your comment. The note moves to Returned and shows in Returned, waiting on workers on the right of the queue.

Escalate a note to an incident

1. On a note flagged Possible incident, read the red callout on the note page.
2. Select Escalate to incident. The incident wizard opens prefilled from the note; check each step and submit.
3. Once linked, the note page shows Open incident instead.

Tips

• The stats at the top show Waiting for review, Flagged in queue, Returned to workers and Approved in the last 30 days with the share that has goal evidence.
• Notes also appear in Home → Approvals inbox as Progress notes; deciding there or in the queue does the same thing.
• After approval, use the Amend a locked note card on the note page to add an amendment, correction, late entry or reviewer annotation. The original text is never changed.

If something goes wrong

“Someone else has to approve your notes.”

You cannot approve a note you wrote. Ask another reviewer.

“Restricted note: You need permission to read restricted notes to review this one.”

Restricted notes need the permission to view restricted notes. Ask an administrator or pass it to someone who has it.

Bulk approve says “N of M notes approved; the rest changed or can’t be approved by you”.

Flagged, restricted or your own notes are skipped by bulk approve. Open the remaining notes one by one.

The Review queue tab is missing.

Only people with the approve permission see it (team leaders and registered nurses by default). Others see All notes.