CAREMESH FOR PUBLIC HEALTH
careMESH Case Management for Public Health
Public health referrals don’t close themselves.
Close the loop with teams, community partners, and information to coordinate the next steps in care.
Public health departments manage critical programs for people with complex needs. Yet community health workers, first responders, and navigators often work across disconnected systems, paper forms, and fragmented communication channels.
careMESH centralizes incoming referrals, organizes care pathways, and gives public health teams a connected view of each participant’s current and past interactions across programs. Teams can assign responsibility, coordinate follow-up, and see what needs attention.
The gap between identifying a need and connecting someone to support
A crisis hotline or community partner submits a referral. The intake arrives, but the case still needs an owner. Someone must assess the individual’s needs, coordinate a field response, arrange services, and monitor progress over time. If those steps remain in separate systems, spreadsheets, or paper forms, a referral can still become unfinished work.
For programs spanning behavioral health crisis response, justice system diversion, transitional care, or maternal and child health, it matters who received the referral and what happened next. Public health teams need visibility into progress. Navigators need a manageable way to act. Participants need help moving from an identified need to the appropriate support.
Where the process breaks down
The next step has no owner
A case may require a field assessment, supervisor approval, and ongoing monitoring. Without assigned tasks, due dates, and reminders, follow-up competes with everything else the team handles.
Repeated data entry delays the next step
Retyping intake details from paper forms or external systems introduces errors and takes time away from outreach. Information from connected systems or prior cases helps teams start with more context and less administrative work.
Referrals arrive without a clear path forward
Faxes, web forms, and electronic clinical referrals arrive through separate channels. Without a centralized intake process and appropriate access controls, staff can miss requests, duplicate work, or lose track of handoffs.
Participant history stays fragmented.
Individuals may interact with multiple programs over time. Without a connected view of past interventions and current enrollments, navigators can miss context that would inform the next step in care.
How careMESH helps
Centralize referral intake. Bring web-based referrals, digital faxes, and secure messages into a shared intake workflow so authorized teams can review incoming requests in one place.
Guide the next steps. Move participants through configurable stages, such as referral intake, assessment and disposition, and ongoing monitoring. Adapt pathways to program requirements and participant needs.
Give tasks clear owners. Turn paper checklists into role-based tasks with assigned owners, due dates, and reminders. Make it easier to see what is complete and what remains.
Connect participant history. Use identity matching to help link incoming cases with existing records, giving teams a longitudinal view of interactions across organizational programs.
Keep teams informed. Use shared notes and @mentions to notify the right team member about updates, changing needs, or work that needs attention.
From crisis referral to community stabilization
How a configured behavioral health crisis response workflow can support intake, coordination, and follow-up:
A referral arrives through a web-based form.
Authorized supervisors receive an alert, review the intake, and create a case using available referral information to reduce duplicate data entry.
The case appears in the referral intake stage on the visual Case Hub board.
A navigator is assigned, with time-bound tasks to complete an assessment, review relevant history, and determine the appropriate next steps.
Identity matching connects the individual to an existing record; for example, a past interaction with a housing and community integration program.
During the first encounter, the navigator completes program-defined screening and needs assessments using guided forms.
The navigator records the encounter and sends referrals to community partner organizations through secure messaging.
A follow-up reminder prompts the navigator to check whether the individual connected with the referred services and identify any remaining needs.
At a 30-day check-in, the navigator documents progress and closes the case when program criteria are met, or continues follow-up when additional support is needed.
careMESH for Public Health
Beyond case management: Preserving the individual's story
Behind every public health case is a real person, often facing complex and interconnected challenges. Some individuals are new to a program, with little or no information available about their history. Others have interacted with multiple programs, providers, and community organizations over time, leaving behind a wealth of information that can be difficult to piece together.
An individual's journey may include dozens of progress notes, multiple care teams, hospital admissions and discharges, release and reinsertion after incarceration, referrals to community resources, and ongoing monitoring as circumstances change. At the same time, they may be navigating homelessness, substance use challenges, involvement with the criminal justice system, or difficulties accessing identification documents, benefits, and other essential services.
An effective case management system's value extends beyond coordinating tasks and workflows. It lies in preserving the individual's story and making that information accessible, meaningful, and actionable for the teams responsible for their care.
Much like a customer relationship management system, careMESH brings together participant history, assessments, documents, interactions, progress notes, and service coordination into a cohesive record. Rather than treating each referral or encounter as an isolated event, authorized teams can build on what they already know, understand how needs have evolved, and make more informed decisions about what to do next.
By safeguarding this information and supporting continuity across programs, this ultimately means more informed teams, more coordinated services, and a greater opportunity to improve outcomes for the individuals and communities they serve.
Know what happened after the referral
Evaluating program effectiveness starts with knowing where work stands. careMESH’s metrics dashboard and reporting tools help teams track:
Caseload and capacity. View active cases by assignee and participants by stage to understand workload and identify potential bottlenecks.
Progress against program targets. Flag cases that exceed defined time targets within a stage, helping teams identify participants at risk of delay.
Reporting and analysis. Export structured data by date range or staff assignment to support program evaluation, funding reports, and research.
Use that visibility to distinguish incoming referrals, active work, completed follow-up, and cases that still need attention.
A shared goal with value for everyone involved
For community health workers and navigators. Bring participant information, assessment forms, contact notes, tasks, and follow-ups into one case view. Use prioritized task lists to see what needs attention and manage upcoming work.
For program supervisors. View active cases across program stages, spot bottlenecks, and track assignments. Receive configured alerts and review disposition decisions within the workflow.
For public health leadership and researchers. Use structured data to evaluate program activity, examine outcomes across populations, and inform decisions about resources and services.
Connect public health referrals to the next step in care
Start with one program or participant population. Define the pathway, assign responsibility, and agree on the information needed to track progress.
Give teams a clearer way to coordinate the work and a shared view of what happens after the referral.
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