Start a free CaminoCare Navigator Workspace, invite your two teammates, and create one minimal-PII case for each of the 20 open referrals. Then attach the actual clinic, log each contact, mark whether the client reached care, and export the month’s encounter records as a CSV.
The free tier covers up to three seats and 25 open cases, so a three-person free-clinic team can handle this month’s referral follow-up without paying or collecting more client information than the work requires.
Set up the workspace and keep cases minimal
Create a Navigator Workspace and invite the other two team members with the workspace’s single-use invitation links. The owner can manage membership and billing; members can work in the cases and referrals.
Before entering the 20 referrals, agree on one simple rule: use a client label that helps your team recognize the case without entering full identity details. Initials, a first name, or a clinic-approved short label can work. Do not add a full name, date of birth, home address, medical record number, or clinical narrative.
Create one case per person who needs follow-up. With 20 open cases, you remain within the free plan’s 25-case limit. If several referrals belong to one person, keep them in that person’s case so the follow-up history stays together.
This gives every referral a home instead of leaving it in a paper stack, personal phone notes, or an inbox. For a closer look at that problem, read Free Clinic Referral Tracking: Give Every Referral One Home.
Attach the clinic the client was actually given
A referral record needs a real destination. Use CaminoCare’s care finder to search by the client’s ZIP code, then filter for details that affect whether the referral is usable: uninsured access, sliding-scale fees, Medicaid acceptance, and Spanish availability.
Attach the clinic referral to the case rather than typing a loose clinic name into a note. Your team keeps the address, tap-to-call number, distance, source information, and data freshness with the referral. That makes a later handoff far easier. The next navigator can see where the person was asked to go and call the same location if the plan needs repair.
Check the freshness stamp before relying on a listing. Public directories change, and clinic hours can change with little notice. A record showing when data was updated is useful context, not a promise that the door will be open. Call ahead when the referral depends on hours, cost, language support, or walk-in availability. This plain-language guide to comparing clinic results can help staff make those calls more useful.
Divide follow-up work before the reporting deadline
Assign the 20 cases across the three people before anyone starts calling. A simple split might be seven cases for one navigator, seven for another, and six for the third. Decide who covers missed calls or urgent changes so no referral disappears when a teammate is out.
Use the case record to log each navigation encounter as it happens. Record the work your team actually did, such as calling a clinic, explaining what to bring, helping arrange transportation, or checking whether the client connected. Add relevant social-determinant factors only when they affected the referral, such as transportation, language, housing, or cost barriers.
Keep entries short and factual. “Called clinic with client; sliding-scale intake requires proof of address; client plans to call Tuesday” is more useful for the next person than a long summary. It also helps your team see the actual barrier: the referral may be correct, while the intake requirement still stops the person from reaching care.
Record the outcome, including when care did not happen
For each attached referral, update whether the client reached care. A completed referral can mean the client attended, scheduled, or otherwise connected based on your organization’s own workflow. If the person did not reach care, record the reason you know: no answer from the clinic, cost concern, transportation problem, language mismatch, appointment unavailable, or unable to contact the client.
Do not turn an unknown outcome into a successful one. “No response after two calls” tells the truth and gives the team a clear next task. It also keeps month-end counts from looking better than the care people actually received.
A referral outcome is the part that proves whether navigation work moved beyond a recommendation. CMS navigation programs document needs, services, and referral outcomes as cases, so consistent outcome tracking also makes your local reporting more useful when you review workload and follow-up gaps.
Export the month’s encounter data
At month end, review each encounter for the fields your organization needs. CaminoCare can log carefully labelled suggested billing codes, but your team remains responsible for deciding what is appropriate for your billing workflow. Treat the export as documentation support, not a billing decision.
Export the monthly billing-ready encounter CSV from the workspace. The file is built for organization workflows and can help your team reconcile work completed, minutes recorded, navigation activities, and suggested codes. Review it before sending it to a billing process or partner system.
Open cases remain visible after the export. For the 20 referrals, leave cases open when a person still needs a call, a new clinic option, or confirmation that care happened. Close them only when your organization’s follow-up process is complete.
Today, create the workspace, invite the other two staff members, and enter the first five open referrals together. That first shared batch will reveal the labels, outcome choices, and note style your team needs before the remaining 15 cases arrive.
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