Key Concepts: Care Plans, Workflows, and Tasks

Subflow uses three connected features to manage the patient care experience. The features are care plans, workflows, and tasks. Understanding how these three features work together helps you determine how best to utilize Subflow for your patient’s care journey.

Care plans

A care plan is the map of a patient's full care journey. It shows you, at a glance, where each enrolled patient stands in their clinical program, from the first contact through to the final phase of care.

Care plans are organized into phases. Each phase groups a set of statuses that reflect the patient's progress at that point in their care. When you open a care plan in Subflow, you see each phase laid out on a board, with patients positioned in the status column that reflects their progress.

The care plan is the visualization layer. It shows you where patients are, but it is not what moves them forward to the next phase. To automate this progression, care plan processes are connected with workflows. Workflows handle this progression automatically, making the process easier to manage at scale.

Workflows

A workflow is the automation layer that runs in the background of a care plan. It is triggered by an event, such as a patient submitting a form, completing a task, or entering a segment, and then carries out a series of actions.

Workflows can send messages to patients, wait for a response or a set amount of time, split into different paths based on a patient's answers, and create tasks for the staff when human action is required.

A care plan can have multiple workflows attached to it, each responsible for a different part of the patient journey. One workflow can also serve multiple care plans. The workflow can automatically move a patient from one phase to the next without manual effort.

Tasks

A task is an action item created for a team member, typically by a workflow. When a workflow reaches a point where a human decision or action is needed before care can continue, it creates a task and assigns it to the appropriate person.

When a team member completes a task, the workflow can pick up from where it paused and continue running.

Tasks can also be created manually when needed. Each task can include a description, a due date, a priority level, and optional subtasks that can be assigned to a team member.

How they work together

Think of the three features as layers of the same system:

• Care plan: the view that shows you where each patient is in their care journey.

• Workflow: the automation that moves patients forward, sending messages and responding to events without manual involvement.

• Task: the point where a workflow pauses and asks a team member to perform the required action before resuming. The next step is determined by the final status of the task the team member performed.

In practice, most patient progress happens automatically. A patient submits a form, the workflow reads the response, sends a follow-up message, and advances the patient's status in the care plan, all without anyone on the care team doing anything. When a step requires a clinical decision, the workflow creates a task so the right person is notified and knows exactly what to do.

Related articles

• Care Plans in Subflow: Learn what a care plan is, how it is structured, and when to use it as the visualization layer for a clinical program.

• Workflows in Subflow: Go deeper into how workflows are built, what nodes they use, and when they pause for staff input.

• Manage Your Tasks: Find out how to view, prioritize, and complete the tasks your workflows generate.