Treatment plans & goals
A treatment plan is the document that defines what a family is working on: their presenting problems, strengths and barriers, discharge criteria, and the goals and objectives that guide the work. Once a plan is approved, progress notes tag its goals, monthly reports roll up the work per goal, and the discharge summary records each goal's final outcome.
Any staff member on the referral can create and edit a plan draft. The author's supervisor or a Practice Manager approves it. Admins don't approve clinical documents.
How a treatment plan's lifecycle differs
Treatment plans work a little differently from progress notes. Instead of waiting for approval to take effect, a plan can be in effect as soon as you submit it — so the family can start acting on it without waiting for the supervisor's signature. The full path is draft → in effect (on submit) → approved, with the usual revision-requested loop.
Step 1 — Start the plan
Open the referral and choose New treatment plan. Fill in the presenting problems, strengths and barriers, and discharge criteria. Everything autosaves.
Step 2 — Add goals and objectives
Add the goals the family is working toward, and under each goal the objectives — the specific, measurable steps. The operational detail (what, how often) lives at the objective level.
Choosing which services a goal applies to. When a referral covers more than one service — for example, an HBC referral billed for both Face-to-Face and Court — each goal lets you check the services it applies to. A brand-new goal starts with all of them checked; uncheck the ones that don't fit so the goal shows up only where it's relevant: in the goal list when you write a progress note for one of those services, and under those service sections on the monthly report. Every goal has to apply to at least one service. If the referral has a single service, the goal applies to it automatically and there's nothing to choose.
If your Practice Manager has set up a common-goals library, you can browse it and pull a goal — with its objectives — straight into the plan instead of typing it from scratch. Pulling one in copies the text into this plan, so you can edit it freely afterward; later changes to the library don't affect plans you've already built.
Step 3 — Sign and submit
Submit the plan to put it in effect. The first version of a plan is signed by the staff member, the family, and the supervisor; later reviews don't need the family to re-sign.
Reviewing a plan (90-day reviews)
A plan review isn't a separate document — it's a new version of the same plan. When it's time, use Start 90-day review: the active goals and narrative carry forward so you can update them, and submitting creates the new approved version. Goals keep their identity across versions, so the documents that reference them stay connected.
You can only have one plan review in progress per referral at once. Finish (or discard) the one you've started before beginning another.
Frequently asked questions
Can the family start working on the plan before the supervisor approves it? Yes — that's the point of the "in effect" stage. Submitting puts the plan in effect; supervisor approval is the final sign-off.
I edited a goal after the plan was approved. What happens? Edits to an approved plan create a new version rather than changing the approved one in place, which keeps the history intact.
Do I have to use the common-goals library? No. It's a shortcut your PM can provide. You can always write goals and objectives directly.
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